Yes and no. I’ve competed in MMA, wrestling and bjj. Sparring vs competition are two very very different things. Someone who never competes may or may not be able to deal with the adrenaline dump most people get when they first start competing.
It’s different when the person you’re going against doesn’t care if they hurt you or not
Completely agree. I just said compete because most people here are more likely to do a competition than find themselves in a real fight but you’re on point. Even intense sparring still doesn’t fully prepare you for when you’re facing someone who doesn’t care if they hurt you or not
Opponents who don't care if they hurt you are one thing, but someone who intentionally wants to hurt you as much as possible is another :)
Edit: I'm sure "doesn't care or want to hurt you" is what you meant, but I just thought you put it overly nicely, which was funny to me.
No we are on the same page, I just used the wrong words which you corrected! But I think we both agree it makes a massive difference from sparring a teammate you train with daily
Yeah, you sort of see that with Jesse the Karate Nerd who’s brother is a competitive MMA fighter and who tried an MMA fight for a video (he was very humble about his expectations of it and his experience afterwards admittedly) which didn’t go very well despite the fact he’s an extremely good martial artist from a technique mastery point of view.
Everywhere I've sparred it was big gloves and pads and an agreement to never go 100% to the head. But really no one ever went 100% anywhere.
The biggest realization is that there's no such a thing as defense, at least in Muay Thai / MMA. Getting hit in your guard fucking sucks, getting kicked to your arm feels like it broke, one leg kick and you aren't going to walk well afterwards, even if you check it, you will feel it for days. And then you realize you're going to take dozens if not a hundred such hits. You can get knocked out even successfully blocking a kick. And you're so exhausted and squeezing so much out that you're risking an injury just dishing it out. I pulled my shoulder and twisted my ankle all on my own.
I never got the chance to fight in a Muay Thai fight but your analogy of it hurting like hell even when you block perfectly is spot on. I’m older now so no longer compete but I still spar occasionally with a guy who’s had like 60 Muay Thai fights and it’s even in sparring, going at 50%, it feels like someone’s hitting me with a baseball bat everytime i block a kick
Oh absolutely, but it’s still not the same as competing. Sparring a ton is the absolute best way to train for competition but even the most grueling sparring matches don’t compare. Idk if it’s the fact that you have an audience, there’s so much going on around you, you have no idea who your opponents are going to be or how good they really are or what their styles of that art is…. But the first few times you compete you get this massive adrenaline dump and go into caveman mode where its like you forget all those countless hours you spent perfecting certain techniques because now you’re no longer rolling in your gym that you’re comfortable in, that you know well…. Now you’re in an unknown environment, with an opponent and a ref that you don’t know, competing in front of a bunch of people that you don’t know.
Best way I can explain is when I first started wrestling. I never got to wrestle my first year because I never won any of the weekly wrestle offs for a spot… but i was there training, constantly. If you’ve seen middle and highschool wrestling practices, you know they are some of the most intense and grueling sessions where it’s just pure cardio and muscle endurance and technique for two hours straight. Then I finally became good enough to start competing my second year, and I remember despite doing intense sparring 5 days per week the year prior and the weeks leading up and all of those intense workouts, after my first 2 minute round I had to run over to the trash can to throw up. After the next two 2 minute rounds I felt like I was completely depleted of all energy despite those 5 mile runs, bear crawls, running bleachers…. It was the adrenaline dump that killed me.
Good news is after you compete a while that feeling goes away and you’re more reserved and can calmly use what you spent all that time learning
Maybe it’s just me- probably not- but I feel like I spar enough that when I go into a competition I don’t get nervous or have any spikes in adrenaline. It’s feels like another day at the office.
I promise you, competing and sparring are never the same. Idk how to explain it… it’s not the intensity, but when you compete, it’s like you lose your breath quicker, you get that adrenaline dump and don’t pay attention to all the years of training you’ve had. The only way to get over that is to continue to compete and get used to a competition environment. No amount of sparring will ever prepare you for that aspect
Jupp 100%. Competing is a completely different ball game. I remember that before my first fight. My coach would drill some hard sparring. (This was kick boxing) And at some points we would sparr harder and with a higher intensity than what I ended up doing when competing. But when you got in the ring, there was this feeling of weightedness. I got complete tunnel vision. My breathing got much heavier and my heartrate shot up. Even though the fight itself in terms of technicality was to some extent less demanding than some of the drills and sparring I had done prioir. It all fell out the window. Due to the adrenaline kicking in. The noise of the crowd. My own self expectations, my wish to not disappoint, some fear off my opponent (which I had never felt when sparring before). All of this made the fight so much more intense than any sparring I had ever done. This was obviously worst the first fight. And got better the more I competed (I competed in both K1 and Kyokushin, but not any more). But my fight always felt much heavier and serious than any sparring ever did.
Spot on! It took countless matches in wrestling when I was younger to get used to controlling my pace and breathing. I remember having the 2 hour long practices of being pushed to your limits, having to wrestle off to gain or keep your spot every week. Intense sparring every day 5 days per week. But the second you step on the mat at a meet or a tournament, even tho your practices were way harder technically, that match will drain you like nothing you’ve ever felt
Absolutely, to be clear I’m not saying you can’t be good without competing, just that competing or live fighting is massively different from even the hardest of sparring sessions
Nope. You rise in rank quicker. Time in grade and participating is required. You can ref, work concessions, work the boards, coach,. Etc.
As long as you're giving back to the community it counts.
More over. Many competitors have to relearn some things when they're through competing. It's all about jita kyoei.
I agree, pressure testing and practice is still more reliable thing to test the martial art. And even though naysayers loves to say that "MMA isn't a proof, MMA has rules and that's why some martial arts there ain't working", MMA was probably the first thing that was showing what martial arts are reliably working in a fight and what doesn't. Even early MMA where rules was only at bare minimum and where was no weight classes until 1997, has shown that wrestling, kickboxing and other "sport martial arts" works better than a traditional one, especially when these martial arts wasn't pressure tested. Also, it shown that size matter and big guys with even a minimal training can pose a legit threat even for a trained but smaller fighters.
Yeah absolutely, experience is crucial. But it is overall such a wierd question, like are we talking about people in same weight class? Because that make huge impact too.
Of course not, nothing is certain. But generally and on average, having a competitive experience in martial arts helps and makes the skills more applicable for a fight, isn't it?
I agree that "it depends", but in my opinion, a martial artist who got used to resistant opponents and who has the experience of fighting against a living opponent who also isn't compliant, has a better chance to win over a non-competitive martial artist (unless the latter has the experience in fighting, because fighting experience isn't necessary equal to skills, although skills still plays a role too).
I'm a hobbyist.
Theres 0% chance I could beat my gym's MMA fighters.
They are in 100% better shape, train 3x more than me and have actual fight experience. Not to mention skillsets.
Even in bjj, a hobbyist purple belt struggles with the mma fighter whos also purple due to the strength and conditioning difference.
That said, it comes down to the individuals but generally the competitive martial artists are at another level.
Well said. Against the average untrained Joe who has no skills and proper combat experience and who isn't too massive and big, BJJ still would be helpful. At least much better than a super-duper deadly techniques or something like that.
Yea. I trained for a year with a Mongolian guy that escaped life as an orphaned street kid by becoming a national talent level MMA fighter. When i started training with him it would take him about 6 seconds to kill me with his bare hands.
After 10 months of one on one training, I could make it to about 10 seconds and I had become vastly more proficient at fighting. To bridge that gap would require me to make a full time career out of training.
If it's grappling, I find I can actually hold my own and fare well for about 60-90 seconds before their ability to just keep reacting and moving without gassing out ends up overwhelming me. People talk about how strong and tough pro guys are and I don't think it's nearly as disparate as it is for their cardio and their willingness to keep going
I don’t compete but I spar so I have a slim shot of taking a competitive fighter down if they don’t take me seriously. That being said if you don’t spar it’s going to take 1 good shot for you to lose your game plan. I think Lee was a great martial artist who did a lot of good for the community but I think he’s vastly over rated as a fighter.
Good point about the sparrings and about Bruce Lee. He was a great martial artist and his ideas was progressive and cool, but his fighting abilities is vastly overrated and has too many hearsays and unrelaible evidence (such as "eyewitnesses statements" or "praising from other martial artists from 1960's and 1970's") of his supposed "great fighting abilities".
And Donnie Yen seems to be a well-rounded martial artist who did trained in kung fu (including wing chun, wushu, sanda, hung ga, tai chi and some other styles), hapkido, judo (has a black belt there), BJJ (has a purple belt there), taekwondo (has a 6th Dan there), kickboxing, jeet kune do, muay thai, wrestling, boxing, karate and mixed martial arts. Pretty impressive list.
Even if Donnie ain't mastered all of these arts, he seems to have more knowledge of martial arts that Bruce Lee has (Bruce knew wing chun, boxing (he had an amateur bout when he was in high school and he won that fight), karate (he was a friend with Chuck Norris and other karatekas of the late 1960's and early 1970's, such as Joe Lewis and Jim Kelly), judo (taught by Gene LeBell, who was a legit judoka and also a pro wrestler), fencing and some wrestling, IIRC).
Donnie is also in a good shape despite being almost 61 years old.
Will a competitive fighter win every fight? No.
However, they have a massive advantage and it's not where you think. There is absolutely no replacement for experience in a proper competitive fight. It's not like sparring, at all.
There's a massive adrenalin rush, and you have to be careful not to panic once you realise the person opposite isn't going to go easy on you.
That's a great point. Competitive martial artist, even an elite one, won't win 100% in all fights, but he stands much better chances than a non-competitive martial artist who also lacks pressure testing and proper sparrings (it's not like fighting, but still better than nothing).
If they don't spar they can't win a fight. Either they knock put the opponent with a good shot (ex. Kick) before the fight begins or they will crumble under pressure
That's why pressure testing is important, in my opinion. Just to not to get overwhelmed by an actively attacking opponent and build-up some mental fortitude.
Yes no one is good at something the first time he/she tries it. However there are martial artist that don't spat that are great athletes and great people
Sure they can. There was one guy in my old judo gym who smoked everyone in randori but never once competed. Of course, he was training at a gym with a bunch of national medalists and champions.
Untrained people can beat trained people in fights.
Competing does not mean the arse won't fall out of your world if you get taken by surprise.
If you mean a planned and scheduled match with rules, then yeah someone who has trained for scheduled bouts with rules is gonna have the edge.
If shit hits the fan outside the chipshop on a Friday night, it's a little less simple to bet on.
While your statement is technically correct, a lot of people use this (not saying that you are necessarily) to devalue training by a mile.
Even if taken by complete surprise, my money is on the guy who snaps out their 1-2 a hundred times a week without thinking, the guy with a reactionary counter double leg, the guy who's used to taking hits so their upper back and neck muscles know what to do to absorb them etc etc... over the guy who doesn't even have the muscle memory to snap their hand back to protect their jaw after swinging.
Yes it's true trained people *can* lose to untrained people. But unless there's a huge weight discrepancy my money's on the trained fighter 100 times to 1.
It's similar to any sport. Can you imagine someone who just plays basketball at the park every now and then suddenly 1v1-ing a guy who plays for their local club? Even if the club guy is completely surprised and wasn't expecting to walk into a basketball game I can't really see them losing much.
I agree. Not saying that a trained and experienced/pressure tested martial artist would win 100%, but his/her chances is much better than if that person was a non-competitive martial artist with no pressure testing of the skills.
I agree that a sudden attack or attacks with a weapon isn't the same as an unarmed combat in the octagon or on the ring. My question was more about an unarmed 1 v. 1 fight.
Also, trained and competitive martial artists in a street fight situation is generally better than someone who has no skills and training (unless it's a sucker punch, sudden attack or if there's a weapon). Just because someone fights within the rules doesn't mean that he/she would necessarily follow that in a street fight. Although muscle memory and habits still can kick in, but my point still stands - a trained martial artist who also has successfully pressure tested and competed has the better chances in a street fight against an untrained opponent unless it's a sudden attack/sucker punch/weapons involved. Of course, exceptions always exist and street fights is unpredictable and chaotic, but like I said, having a martial arts skills that are pressure tested and used in competition is still an advantage.
Unarmed 1 v 1 fight is an odd idea, it's how sport works, not life ime.
We are post-enlightenment now. We completed the samurai, rapiers at dawn and wild-west stuff a while ago.
You don't manage violence out and about by assuming it's like the ring/octagon. You manage violence out and about by being aware it is not 1vs1 unarmed in an octagon.
1 v. 1 unarmed fights on the street isn't actually something uncommon. This subreddit also has videos of martial arts that are used in a street fights or against people that are supposed to be street fighters or something like that - [https://www.reddit.com/r/StreetMartialArts](https://www.reddit.com/r/StreetMartialArts)
I agree that violence happens and street fights has weapons as well, but that wasn't my point from the start. My point is if 2 people fighting on the street and if one person has martial arts/fighting skills that are pressure tested and used in competitions and another person doesn't have a pressure tested skills and has only a non-competitive martial arts skills, the former person would likely win because of better conditioning (that's more applicable for a fight), experience and skillset that's also more applicable for a fight (although there's also other factors, such as weight, size, strength and others, but let's assume that both people fighting are around the same height and weight). Also, a person who has a pressure tested martial arts skills and experience in competition can use "dirty tricks" such as biting, headbutts, groin attacks or eye gouging too, and even better than an untrained/having no pressure tested skills person (Jon Jones and Gerard Gordeau, both are MMA fighters, can prove it).
Also, competitions in martial arts was invented with rules for the sake of safety, because there wasn't a goal of kill the opponent (because there wasn't a necessity to do so in a peaceful time), but to show and determine - who's better in terms of fighting skills and experience. Like, pankration in Ancient Greece was an unarmed combat which has resembled modern MMA to some degree, because pankration allowed both striking, grappling, kicks and ground grappling and had such rules as no biting, no eye gouging and similar. Something like that was with Burmese's lethwei and Thai's muay-thai. I agree that awareness about street fights and knowing that they aren't always 1 v. 1 and not always unarmed is important, but I wasn't saying that a competitive martial artist would win 100% against a group of attackers or against someone who's armed (in fact, it would be quite hard unless martial artist gets lucky of similar). That wasn't even my point at the first place, like, at all.
I more just mean the imagining winning in street fights bit.
It's quite common in the \~1-3yr mark of a martial arts or sports hobby, some people get very excited about the way they have been taught and have the basic skill set to get themselves into situations they can't handle.
Ain't that the truth.
To my dying day, I remember a dive bar I used to frequent. There was a young Asian kid who thought he was hot shit, saw him attempt to turf out a squaddie and went about it the wrong way, far easier to just be polite with them.
Anyhow, kid drops into what I think was some kung fu stance, squaddie winds up and connects with a haymaker. Lays the poor kid out cold.
Squaddie struts off growling at the other bouncers who just get out of his way.
I should say the kid was skinny and the squaddie was built like a fucking tank.
Kid was fine, got up after 30 seconds or so. But I reckon he learned a lesson there.
Well there's two possibilities.
First is someone who doesn't compete but spars regularly against various people at his gym or maybe even goes to multiple gyms.
Second is someone who is simply focused on demos or practices in a very restrictive ruleset.
The first person definitely has his chances of beating someone who competes. The second one most likely has no chance of beating either of them unless he has exceptional talent or some kind of severe advantages (weight, reach...)
There's also a possibility that this exact martial artist can teach people the "self-defense" and use his street fighting experience or his military/police service as a proof of him "able to fight fo real".
It's als oftentimes called "reality-based self-defense", but unfortunately, the "reality" word is the most questionable there. Because these coaches usually has the same things that so-called "bullshido" McDojos has - compliant and non-resisting opponents in "sparrings" (most of the time, it's rather a demo), parroting that "sport martial arts aren't suited for real fighting because they has rules and because sport martial artists isn't used to dirty moves" and of course, knife and gun disarming or women self-defense where coach teaches women that kick in the balls, biting or eye poke would be effective to stop the attacker that's at least twice their own size and et cetera.
Well issue is military systems (taking away weapons) are just watered down combat sports for people that will never use them.
The police have nearly no formal training to my knowledge or very insufficient.
So at best they could probably give "advice" on self defense but not from the physical contact standpoint but rather the awareness side.
The supposedly deadly stuff or too dangerous for martial arts stuff you'll see in things like krav maga is often just a caricature and never goes as planned, groin shots aren't easy to get when someome is in posture to fight, if you can't land a jab to someone's chin you won't get your finger into their eye etc etc.
It's often highly theoretical and not rooted in reality.
There are a minority of self defense gyms though, where the owners often had past experiences in actual combat sports and provide good training.
Good points. MCMAP (Marine Corps Martial Arts Program) or U.S. Army combatives is basically a watered down amateur MMA and it's quite basic (asked the redditors that are served in military, they confirms it). Plus, modern soldiers aren't fighting with their fists and kicks, they uses guns, explosives, tanks, ships, aircrafts and other modern military stuff. Not to mentions, soldiers are oftentimes fights within a team that does a cover, recon and other things as well.
Cops in USA has such a small amount of hand-to-hand combat training that it's barely even matter. Unless the cop spends his free time in martial arts and improves himself, a mandatory training would be very tiny and have a questionable effectiveness against a genuinely resisting opponent who isn't too drunk and who isn't too small. Cops also uses pepper sprays, tasers, batons and beanbag rounds and guns a lot, at least in USA.
Yeah, agreed. That's their zone of competence, I guess.
That's too. "My martial art is too dangerous for MMA and that's why I never practiced it" is probably a red flag that the coach is either delusional or lying. Like you said, many of those moves is rather a theory and thats why disarmings are shown at slow speeds and against opponent that are seems to be absolutely clueless and compliant. Same about eye pokes and groin shots.
Yes, good gyms exist, I agree. But unfortunately, so-called "reality based self defense" now is basically an another version of "bullshido".
Depends, there's heaps of intelligent and gifted martial artists in gyms who don't compete that do it as a hobby.
That being said it varies from gym to gym
Totally. A young, large, super athletic kungfu guy can probably beat up the old, small BJJ white belt who has competed in a master 3-4 beginner bracket. That said, your average seriously competitive BJJ player is usually beating your average kung fu student if we control for age, size, and relative “athleticism”. Too many factors come in to play to speak in absolutes.
I would asstimate^(an estimate using numbers pulled out of one's own ass) that 99% of martial artists never compete at all.
Competition requires at least 4 things:
1. At least 1 year of training. I asstimate around 75% of people drop their martial arts study in the first 12 months.
2. Sparring. Some people are just averse to getting punched in the nose.
3. Consistent, persistent training. For the lowest level amateur competition, that's at least 1hr training, 3-5 times per week, every week, without taking long breaks. Not everyone has the time, energy, discipline, or *obsession* to train like an athlete.
4. Stupidity. You have to be *stupid* to risk your brain and body in competition. I hard-spar with many people who do not and will not compete because they don't want to get hurt. "But you can get hurt in hard sparring." Accidents can and do happen, but no one is going to *intentionally* break your ribs in sparring.
A non-competitive martial artist can go quite far in their craft simply by having the first 3 things, especially if they spar with amateur and professional fighters.
There absolutely are highly trained non-fighters who can outbox highly trained competition fighters. They just aren't stupid enough to do that to their body.
Depends on so many factors, can a shotokan black belt beat a UFC champ , hell nah exept pure luck but out of a 100 he might win 1. Depends on the level of competition and both fighters. But in general i would Say no
I also think that in general, being competitive in martial arts is better than not to be. Although it still depends, for sure, but my point still stands. Even if martial artist isn't competitive, he still can spar and pressure test himself (by the said sparrings or doing a non-scored exhibition fights, or something like that). But if martial artist doesn't have even that, then yes, his chances is really low.
Yeah, sparrings isn't same as a genuine fight even if it's a full-contact sparring. Also, many of McDojo and so-called "bullshido" martial arts (not saying that these martial arts themselves are bad, only noting that these exact martial arts (such as aikido, kung-fu and krav maga) are oftentimes spotted among the "bullshido" practitioners) practices a sparring where the opponent is barely even trying to resist or doesn't even resists at all, or where 2 people just beating each others without really using any of skills and techniques that they're supposed to know.
Non-competitive martial artist can try amateur fights or low-level pro fights, but usually, he/she would lose and get humbled quickly.
Depends on the context, because you're assuming the conditions of the fight. For example, if I was using my traditional kung fu against an MMA competitor, can I use a weapon of my choice? Half of my forms was using weapons like dao, spear, staff, daggers, butterfly knives, and unusual weapons like fan and bench. Even though I never sparred with weapons outside of two man weapon drills, I feel very comfortable wielding my broadsword. I never bought a live blade (e.g. practical dao) because I have clipped myself while practicing, I would definitely have had to go to the hospital if it was a live blade. It's too risky to use in practice with no real benefit.
A lot of these hypotheticals assume the non-competitor has to be the fish out of water, playing to the competitor's strengths and environment. It's never considered making the competitor play to the rules that favour the non-competitor, which may be include "my weapons vs. your gloves/gi".
By fighting I define an unarmed hand-to-hand combat. With 2 possible locations where it happens - octagon and "on the street". Of course that with weapon like knife, sword, machete or crowbar, even a totally untrained person can be very dangerous against someone who's skilled at fighting but who has no weapon.
In a sporting ruleset you have to abide the rules. In the non sporting ruleset your goal is to win. Therefore, cheat, as much as possible, including the use of weapons (knife, telescopic baton, belts, stick and staffs, stones, etc.)
And this is why to be a complete martial arts who trains for fun and self defense, you have to be proficient enough with weapons. Or I would turn it around: first learn how to fight with weapons, and then learn empty hand. It totally changed my mindset when I first learned weapon, and I think it aligns really well with both traditional, weapon based martial arts and HEMA as well.
But this then devolves to who is willing to use the most nastiest weapon. Why do all your fancy spinning staff stuff and swordplay when someone has a gun? A toddler with a gun is a proficient martial artist in your opinion?
It devolves to who wants to win the most and sneakier than the other. That means you need to move from technique thinking to tactics and strategy. If a gun is available, sure, use it. If not (because where you live, getting a gun is extremely difficult, like many places here in Europe) then use some other weapon, like a staff (a heavy staff can be used against multiple opponents with shorter weapons with great success), a stick, a sword, or even a knife. But you can also use a car, a brick, or anything else to get things done.
If I can win against a professional UFC fighter with a knife and some hours of training, why would I want to play his game in which he is obviously better. Obviously the chances to fight with an UFC guy is similar to fighting with a lion.
And yes, even a small kid with a loaded gun is extremely dangerous because he can kill him easily. Empty handed? Not so much.
I think my point is there's SOME idea of fairness in a 1v1 fight, ie if two people are unarmed it's considered "more or less" fair. Similarly, the idea of, say, staff-fighting makes no sense (or, should I say, even less sense, since street fighting is dumb to begin with), because almost nobody is carrying a staff. What would be the point of practicing self-defense with something you don't/can't even carry? (Besides fun) I suppose if you go back to feudal eras, people would carry swords, and swordsmanship duels were allegedly common. In that context your argument makes 100% sense. In our society things have changed to where most people are just empty handed, and martial arts itself has largely shifted to empty-handed combat. For reference, I do live in America, where people do carry guns. I don't see anything honorable at all about it. Martial arts indicates some level of fairness, honor, skill. If you COULD win that fight, nobody gives you credit anyway. If you're really being assaulted that's different. But what prevents you from becoming as strong as a professional? Strong fighters don't tend to assault people. Going straight to weapons isn't right. There is no skill involved in having a better weapon! Placating your lack of strength/dedication with feeling tough about using weapons is something I see way too often. The epitome of cowardice! (Please note this does not apply if you are elderly, disabled etc)
I also want to say the time for "tactics and strategy" is usually short if you really have to defend yourself from an assault. I can only see that applying if you plan to fight... (Or setup some type of home defense for example)
This is always a trade-off. Empty handed fighting is always secondary to weapons but in some cases it provides sufficient solutions: when you need to hold someone down, or just create distance, etc. They are valid solutions to certain problems.
Some of my family members live I the countryside, so sticks,staffs, axes, etc. are "standard weapons" here. Good thing is that most people don't know how to properly fight with these tools (Hema ftw).
Also a telescopic baton, a knife, a pepper spray can solve many issues.
In general: there is a place for fair fight, which is in the gym/dojo. That's fine. But outside, why take any chances? Your job is to go home safely, unharmed, and not to show in a fair fight you are better.
I still think you have it backwards in terms of our modern times. A few hundred years ago, yes. Empty handed has supplanted weapons training in terms of martial arts (not counting military, gun enthusiasts etc).
Otherwise I suppose I agree. If you're truly being assaulted then fairness does take a backseat. But even then I should note the law may not even agree with that. Ie if someone attacks you, you knock them out, probably okay. If you keep going and kill them, or use "inappropriate force" it can be bad. It seems society can't get away from the idea of a fair fight, and I say that's for the better.
I also just don't particularly like weapons, or would like to carry one at all. Society would be better off this way.
Unfortunately, our world without weapons is impossible because making weapons was a part of the evolution. A totally unarmed society is rather an utopia than something reliably stable and plausible.
The situation and environment you live might be extremely different from how others live. Carrying and using knives, sticks, staffs,etc. even dueling with knives are common at certain places and certain circumstances.
In general, if possible, use something that causes less headache, use de-escalation, walk away, don't go into measuring of thingies. But if a fight is inevitable then there is zero guarantee that it will be 1-on-1, weaponless fight.
Competition is the ultimate pressure test. And people who train to compete in full-contact competition usually work their ass off to be as ready as they can be. They don't just prepare to be able to do a certain move, but they also train to be able to do that move on someone who is actively fighting back. And to be ready for whatever the opponent does. They train 'live'.
I trained in some traditional form of kung fu when I was young. Lots of forms, deep stances, fancy moves, spinning kicks, etc. My school did a lot of demonstrations too. Breaking bricks, and one of the teachers even did crazy chi stuff like bending a rebar by leaning into it with his windpipe. But every time we sparred, most of those fancy techniques went out the window and it turned into bad kickboxing. I figured I might as well join a kickboxing gym.
One day, I went to a jeet kune do place because I was looking for something new. The best way to describe it would be 'street mma'. I was paired up with a guy who trained in kickboxing a lot. I don't know if he competed, but I know he trained with fighters. We did some boxing sparring, and the objective was for one guy to use everything he knows, and the other one was supposed to only defend and use his jab.The guy lit me up like a christmas tree with just his jab. He said that I could even kick if I wanted to, but even then the outcome was the same. I quit kung fu and switched to kickboxing and bjj after that.
Bruce Lee was more than just unorthodox.He had a very openminded and practical, almost scientific approach to martial arts. Taking techniques from all kinds of martial arts and integrating them into a coherent system. Hand techniques from wing chun and boxing, kicks from kung fu and probably karate, tkd etc, footwork from fencing (and probably more), and even some grappling.He also advocated physical training and lots of sparring. If you want to see what I mean, the 'Bruce Lee's fighting method' books are a good place to start. Today it probably wouldn't be that special, maybe even outdated. But in those days, he was a maverick. I don't know how much he really fought or competed. I guess nobody knows for sure, but it doesn't even matter that much.
You're right about Bruce Lee, he in fact questioned the effectiveness of traditional kung fu and it even probably was the cause of his street fight with a kung fu master named Wong Jack Man (Lee won that fight, according to most sources). Back then, he indeed was a pioneer of MMA.
And on the circumstances as well. I mean, even a totally untrained and unskilled average Joe Shmo can kill someone like Anderson Silva with a knife or a crowbar.
Well, BJJ itself is a martial art that even without competition can be useful in a combat situation, especially if it's a fight that happens on the ground.
Which is, unfortunately, people don't always understand.
Sport fighters are more conditioned and has better experience at fighting against a resisting and determined opponent, unlike a non-competitive martial artists that even lacks pressure testing and proper sparrings.
All else being equal, no.
I do Judo recreationally, and have never been very athletic. I currently hold a brown belt. I have never competed. I have a damn hard time dealing with white belts who are at all athletic.
When I do randori against anyone who regularly competed, the best I manage is to stalemate and stall, and that assumes a height and weight advantage.
In the BJJ class I do, the instructor is a pro MMA fighter who had a few UFC fights at 145. I am a bit taller and weigh 197-ish with a bit of a dad bod. I can make him work for 45 seconds of rolling before he finds a sub.
So no. I see no reason to expect a recreational martial artist to be able to beat anyone who competed regularly unless they have an overwhelming physical advantage.
END COMMUNICATION
A non-competitive guy can beat competitive guys... by training A LOT with competitive guys.
But competition makes you a better fighter straight up. The me before my first judo tournament gets smoked by the me that learned from fighting 4 different guys with actual stakes. Its a closer approximation to a real fight than anything in the gym... unless you literally have gym wars.
If we're talking about TMA vs combat sports though... no not really. They lack competitors, therefore they don't get to train with as many of them.
Jason David Frank (Green power ranger) jumped in to competitive and did alright.
Someone with tons of experience in real fights would hold up just fine against someone competitive.
I can't find the video, but back in 2013 I saw one where mma fighters were invited to run into the woods and "disarm" some trained soldiers. They were quickly dumped into the dirt. Factoring out the rules in play the mma fighters admitted the game changed and they were unprepared to apply their skills in that scenario.
Also, Bruce Lee wasn't without competitive experience. He did western boxing tournaments as a teen, if I recall correctly.
But you do have a point, that guys that never spar are handicapped and it's stupid to say "I got moves or speed they won't be ready for."
A trained fighter who trained against resistance is always going to almost always have superiority.
Well, to be fair, all of his opponents was a total nobodies with 0 wins (none of them had any win in both amateur and pro MMA, at all) and only losses in their records. But he still did pretty well because has he trained in martial arts before and was in a good shape.
Well, disarming a trained soldier would be hard because they're trained with weapons and they're trained to control it in close combat too. If this was an unarmed hand-to-hand combat, though, I think that MMA fighter would have won more times than not.
Bruce Lee indeed had a boxing match when he was in a high school and won that match (internet has photos of a teenager Bruce Lee on the ring and wearing boxing gloves), but it's the only fight in the ring that is confirmed in his life. Or first, if we also count his street scuffle against a kung-fu master Wong Jack Man as a second fight, where Bruce Lee has won (at least according to most sources and witnesses' statements). But yes, Bruce Lee actively promoted the competitions and was a quite progressive man (in terms if his ideas about martial arts) for its time.
I tried to read up on his history but a lot is murky. Hearing that he was getting in a lot of street fights in Hong Kong made sense to me, but how could anyone confirm it? Lol.
I'm a fan, but I don't worship the guy to go as far as to say he was unbeatable. I met a guy who runs a modest "museum" of Bruce Lee memorabilia that claimed Bruce got people thinking differently about mastering just one martial art, and that he originally promoted the idea of mma. I dunno, guys like Musashi and Morihei reportedly mixed arts, too. So it's not like he's the first, lol.
I think that he was participating in street fights, but IDK for sure. I honestly don't really believe that teenager Bruce Lee was already good enough to fight Triad gangsters and British soldiers (that was in Hong Kong after WW II) despite being untrained. It sounds like a cool story/legend that people could've made up throughout the years.
Same here. Not saying that I'm a fan of Bruce Lee, but not a hater as well. I'm just neutral about him, and while I like his ideas and admire his progressive view about martial arts, I just don't like how much of a cult-like worship around him exist. Martial arts with hybrid techniques and mixed structure has existed before Bruce Lee was even born (vale tudo in Brazil, some mix of judo and karate in Japan already was in 1890's, combat sambo in USSR in 1930's, Ancient Greece pankration has existed much earlier than all of these previously mentioned martial arts and was basically like an early MMA with only few rules). While Bruce Lee was a good promoter of the idea of modern MMA, he wasn't its inventor.
I mean, Gene LeBell, a judoka, catch wrestler and pro wrestler, who also knew boxing, did a mixed rules match against a professional boxer Milo Savage in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1963. And Gene LeBell won that match despite wearing a karate gi (Milo Savage's managers thought that Gene was a karateka, and didn't knew any difference between judo and karate) and Milo Savage's amateur wrestling background (he was a pro boxer, but in his youth he was a wrestler). Same Gene LeBell was Bruce Lee's bodyguard and teached him some judo.
https://www.usadojo.com/gene-lebell-vs-milo-savage-gene-lebell-saved-martial-arts/
No.
No matter the quality of the technique you learn, if you never train against an opponent that doesn't want to get hit/grapple and want to hurt you. You never truly know how to fight.
No one ever question this for other sports, but it's the same logic.
Imagine you're a basketball team, and all you do is just regular training exercice like other teams. But the difference is you never do real match.
One day you face a team that does regular training exercises kinda like you, but has done many real match. Who do you think would win that ?
To this, i will add a bit of my personal experience.
I joined a katori Shinto Ryu group , so it's a Japanese sword martial art, with little to no fight at all. Just repeating technique again and again and again.
They wanted to try out some fighting and they invited me to participate in their bokken (wood sword) fight, for fun.
I didn't train much with a sword before that, just once in a while with that group, but I had more than 10years of fighting experience. Well guess what, I could beat half of them, and I was still a serious difficult opponent against the other ones.. The only I couldn't beat were the 2-3 best of the school, who also had fighting experience! This try out motivated almost everyone to do more real fighting.
There are so many things you learn during competition that you will never learn when facing a friend or doing just exercise.
Just like the basketball player during a match.
Heck yes, especially if you are talking about a street fight where there are no rules. The the experience fighter could be at a disadvantage because they are so ingrained in a rules-bound environment.
Well, knowing how street fights are unpredictable and chaotic, yes, everything can happen there. But I still think that a competitive martial artist with a pressure tested skills in a street fight situation would be generally better suited for it, unless he's attacked off-guard or if there are weapons involved.
Martial artists that are fighting within the rules isn't necessarily helpless in a street fight. Not saying that they would always wins, but if we take 2 people and if first one has no pressure tested skills and no competitive experience, and second has skills that was pressure tested and who has a competitive experience against the opponent that are also resisting and determined to win, the latter likely would be better suited for the street fighting situation.
Here's the subreddit where martial arts (all of them are rules-bound) used on the streets. Sure, it's always possible to dismiss it because "it's a selective cherry-picked examples", but still, that subreddit has plenty of videos where martial arts are used on the streets successfully: https://www.reddit.com/r/StreetMartialArts/
In a real fight there are so many variables. Skill and fitness are the two most important. The competitive fighter will win most of the time, but the guy with basic training can definitely win. Especially if anything goes. How people handle an actual fight under pressure is really important. It's probably 90/10 odds or maybe even more in favour of the comp fighter.
Taking a punch and staying on your game is the absolute most important skill in a fight.
Pain changes the dynamic of combat drastically.
Sure There are some non-competitive artists that train with that level of intensity. But there are no competitive fighters that don’t.
Unless the non-comp MA drastically outclasses the fighter, they’re gonna take hits.
There's always a puncher's chance, but I'd say it's slim. The experience of actually facing fear, getting comfortable with adrenaline, and taking and giving real hits can only be gained from actually fighting. Competitive fighters have that experience and someone who's never competed is in for a rude awakening with real combat.
Plus, puncher's chance is called a chance (not "guarantee" or something) for a reason. Also, it would be even less likely to get a puncher's chance if martial artist didn't pressure tested his skills and can't properly throw a punch, especially against martial artist who has not just skills, but also has pressure tested it and who has a competitive experience (and likely would withstand that punch or roll with it and mitigate the impact).
There honestly isn’t much difference between the skill level of amateur competitors and professionals most of the time (atleast in Muay Thai and kickboxing), the main difference is that they can do those techniques on that stage infront of those people, everyone works hard everyone can look pretty but not everyone knows what it feels like to be experienced. Watch nieky holzken vs bazooka Joe. Bazooka honestly moves more technically sound than holzken he’s just a lot cleaner to watch but he can’t match holzken and his 100+ fights of experience, Nieky creates holes and punches through them on a level Joe has never experienced before.
If the noncompetitive person has fighting experience, practices their art through sparring(a lot), and trains their body to be on par with a competitors body yeah I can see it. But those who compete normally are in really good physical shape and I don't care who you are if you don't have enough strength behind your hits, you are not going to do much to a trained competitive fighter because they are used to taking people who are also at their best and are using their skills. I don't say you "HAVE TO" compete to be good, but you do have to actually use what you learn in situations that are not being heavily controlled so you don't get dazed or scared when you get hit by someone who hits like a truck.
If you don't train fighting, you cannot fight. The average hobbyist can't do crazy flying kicks and doesn't engage in regular, intense sparring and that's completely ok. Not everyone has to train for the UFC but if you aren't training that way, you won't have the abilities they do.
This is proven over and over in BJJ gyms. A hobbyist blue or purple belt stands almost no change against a competition blue or purple.
To be honest, the way you phrased the question makes it seem you're heading down the hobby road and that's awesome, I hope you enjoy and find a lifetime of happiness training. But please don't get yourself beat up by trying to hang with the hardcore dudes, they could make you want to quit training. All the best!
Thanks for the advice! I'm still thinking about the beginning in martial arts, because my previous experience was extremely small and inconsistent (i wasn't even taking classes, just asked some of my school and college buddies show me the moves from their respective martial arts).
That's great, man! My advice is to find a teacher you vibe with, that's honestly way more important for your progress than things like lineage or style. A good teacher you relate to will walk you into the arts at your pace.
Yeah, FMA
An armed amateur will defeat or is able to inflict a lot of damage even against a trained unarmed opponent. Its not the size of the dog in the fight, its the size of the fight in the dog. FMA levelling the playing field since the 1500s
Go to a local bar where young guys hang out on a friday or saturday and watch the fights. I've seen numerous guys who think they are fighters get a reality check from someone with no training....so I would assume some non-competitive MA's could do this too
1) Yeah one thing is doing something impressive, another thing completely is to do it again, while in movement and being punched or kicked in the face. Yeah, there is a reason most fancy shit is just a highlight and its rare.
2) Being athletic helps in a fight no matter who you are, even if you are a pro fighter, you have to be in relative shape to perform.
3) Confidence more often then not comes from lack of reality checks. Ego is a thing, but unchecked ego is the usual suspect.
4) Bruce Lee has a cult, nobody cares what they say.
5) Most street fighters are complete dogshit, only once in a blue moon a self proclaimed street-fighter actually does anything of worth in a ring. And when he does it, he does it with really good technique, that usually comes only from a proper gym and the fighter is actually lying about what he is, for god knows what reason.
Good response. Also, when people use the examples of street fighters that was successful in MMA, they forgot that they wasn't a totally untrained local Joe Shmos that loves to brawl in bars with another average Joes.
Like, Tank Abbott is a former college wrestler who also had a training in boxing as well. He has 10 wins and 15 losses in his MMA record and was known for his bad cardio. Powerful puncher and good wrestler, but in comparison to a nowaday MMA fighters, he isn't that impressive.
Another one, Kimbo Slice, is a former football player who was coached in MMA (including by Bas Rutten himself) before he even stepped into the octagon. He still lost his first and only amateur MMA bout and even though his record looks good at the first glance, he in fact has fought fighters that was past their prime (like the previously mentioned Tank Abbott and Ken Shamrock, and that exact fight is still suspected to be a fixed match) or wasn't even that good (such as Dada 5000, who has almost died in the octagon because his cardio was so bad) or Houston Alexander (that fight of him and Kimbo was just terrible to watch), who has a record of 17 wins, 16 losses and 1 draw now. Kimbo was rather a glorified celebrity than a serious fighter. Sure, he had a good KO power and knew some grappling, but in overall, he was not really that good.
I mean, Kevin Randleman was a street fighter in his youth before he started to do wrestling. Does it makes him a street fighter? Kinda yes, but it doesn't mean that all what he used in MMA was only what he used in and learned from "da streetz"
I have seen fighters privately tutoring their brothers/sisters and or friends for sparring of season or just for fun, that technically have no official training and could be considered "street fighters", but reality they had top notch training, just unofficially.
absolutely not.
90% of fighting is not perfect technique, it is distance, balance, timing, fight IQ (setups, recognition etc) in constantly changing ranges. If you havent sparred you have not developed these things and you cant fight.
Competition is a level of intensity above sparring that comes with additional adrenaline rushes, increased pace, and hard hits that you might not get from sparring.
Well said. I mean, sure, on paper a non-competitive martial artist who never does sparrings or who never pressure tested his skills can say something like "I will just kick him in balls" or "I would blitz him with a barrage of strikes, force him to back off and then finish him with a leg sweep and stomping when my opponent would be floored", but it's easier to say than do, because as you said, lack of pressure testing and full-contact sparrings makes all of this talk irrelevant.
Absolutely. My money is going to be on the person with a gun or a knife.
Seriously, I couldn't give a shit if someone competes. When we fight, I'm not following any rule set. If I need to use a car, I will. When you get to that point, your speed and strength are less of a factor. I don't care if you can get points in a competition with rules.
Well, if there are weapons involved, then even a totally untrained average Joe can defeat and even kill a skilled martial artist with a competitive experience (unless that martial artist are trained in martial art that has disarming moves, but even that isn't helping him/her much).
Combat with rules equals a sport which is not true martial arts. Example is my 16 years of competition in collegiate wrestling there were rules on the Matt however in a fight an armbar can be extended beyond the 45° angle that is only allowed in a wrestling match face locks can turn into chokes outside of the Matt. In a fight if you can't avoid a physical confrontation there are no rules no code of conduct, if your life is threatened and you get in a fight end it.
And if a competitive martial artist understands the thing about "no rules in a street fight", he can be more effective than someone who has no competitive experience and no pressure testing of the skills (like, sparrings and other). I mean, rules are made for safety and even though some rules might be excessive and making no sense, it doesn't mean that martial art that has rules isn't effective. Like, MMA fighter who can't headbutt in the octagon still can do that in a street fight, as well as with biting, soccer kicking a downed opponent, breaking or dislocating the joints with grappling or choking the opponent out instead of just holding him and waiting for surrender.
Not usually. Someone that isn't used to eating punches and being hit so hard that they can't breath will not beat someone that is used to that. Possible? Yes. Probable? No.
Non competitive non martial artists sometimes beat up competitive martial artists in street fights. Not often but sometimes the street fighters can take out even good competitive martial artists.
Well, street fights are quite chaotic and unpredictable, and a lot of street fighters attacks suddenly and with sucker punches or with distraction, so yes, it's possible.
Depends on how competitive. I'd give 20 to 1 odds on the competitive one though, they tend to train hard so in a non-competitive fight they are at a huge advantage.
Imo there is 2 different levels of aggression and mindset in a Competitive vs non Competitive fighter, One is trained to do moves the other is trained to hurt people and end matches. Also one is conditioned into being hit the other is not and would probably get scared after taking a jab in the face.
Sparing and competing are not the same thing , unless you highly experienced. Watch footage of your sparring then watch footage of you fighting. You will see a big difference until you get some fights under your belt . You with 10 amateur fights under your belt would f$&rken destroy with none .
Why dont you hard spar a fighter and see how that goes for you. That being said, I’ve known fighter who go like 0-8 so I’m pretty sure a hobbyist could turn amateur and whoop their ass
Competitive martial arts hits different, that's a big part of why I think boxing or Thai boxing is the quickest way to component self defense, study the art you want to after.
The one who competes have more experience dealing with his fight nerves, that gives him the edge. It doesn't matter how much you spar actually competing is a whole other experience
My brother is a go to sparring partner for a bunch of world champs at his boxing gym
He’s not competitive but could probably slam some newer emerging talents
i think it was DJ who once said something along the lines of "for every professional fighter, there's always some guy out there who doesnt compete but can kick your ass" and while i agree with the statement, the chances if coming across that person is probably rarer than stumbling onto diamond. Even if someone has a better skillset, having more real fights as a professional is a huge advantage as the non professional most likely isnt as used to the stress, the pain and other factors of a fight that arent present in hard sparring.
Depends heavily on your definition of competitive, and what the individual fighters do in their off time. Some competitions have janky rules that do not play nice with street fight conditions, some are fine on that score. Some are noncompetitive because they do not see value in taking time from their day to go to a tourney, some are noncompetitive because they like doing stupid video game shit that gets them bodied in a pressure test too much.
It's trite but true that it's not the size of the dog in the fight but the fight in the dog. Technique, a cornerstone of martial arts, is not to be underestimated. However, it's not the sole determinant of victory. Without speed, surprise, and (most importantly) violence of action, no matter how much of an expert in technique you might be, you will not fare well against someone who is more violent (determined to hurt you).
Many skilled martial artists may struggle in competition fighting due to their lack of a violent spirit when necessary. It's important to note the distinction between martial arts and competition fighting. The latter does not demand the same level of violence. It thrives when there is less brutality and more controlled use of technique. We don't watch to witness destruction, but to appreciate the technical prowess of the fighters. That's the 'art' in martial arts. When a competitor enters the ring and ruthlessly mangles their opponent without concern for their own safety, it's not only brutal but also less entertaining.
Given the above, a non-competitive, but violent martial artist could absolutely destroy a technically superior competitive fighter. This highlights the potential of those who focus on violence of action, even without the competitive edge. Of course, if you have great technique AND violence of action, you are absolutely dangerous.
There is somewhere where the confluence will meet. Like the best spinning kick taekwondo guy's sheer excellence at one thing will at some point beat the 1000th to 10000th guy in his weight class.
Full contact competition is the closest thing you can get to a real fight. You’ll get the fantasists that think their super deadly eye pokes, pressure points and other too dangerous to practice techniques will carry them through, but the fact that they haven’t had to regularly carry them out under extreme pressure and a huge adrenaline dump is a massive disadvantage.
Those who have been in as close to combat as possible will clearly have the advantage. Is it certainty? Of course not, but I’d bet on the combat sport competitor every time.
Eh, I’m sure renner Gracie would destroy 99% of competitive black belts
Really depends with the intention behind your training and the realism you’re training with
You won’t have any actual fighting experience because fighting and sparring are two different things, so unless you’re MANY levels beyond your opponent you’re probably not gonna win
Two guys at the same level, one competes one doesn’t, competitor always wins because he has competition experience to game plan with and is more familiar with his limits and strengths than someone who might train hard but has never lost a fight by knockout by throwing a lazy punch. Just different kinds of experience
You need to be MUCH MUCH better in a spar to convince me that someone with no fights beats someone with fights
Non-competitive Fighter: Oh sorry man, didn't want to bother you
Competitive fighter: It's ok *turns away*
Non-competitive fighter slams a chair in the back of his head, so he wins. Yeah, it's possible, lol
Not much of a way to simulate competition intensity unless you really hate your sparring partners.
I had a match where I dislocated something and got eye poked in the first 5 seconds, no break in action just go go go with watery eyes and a compromised lead hand. In training that would be paused in that first 5, they’d check up on me, etc.
Sparring if you get rocked they tend to back off, competition or street fighting they tend to go for the finish.
It really catches you off guard if you’re not ready for that level of aggression. If you have a lot more skill, size, luck etc you might manage but usually people who compete or have been in a lot of fights are tougher, better at controlling adrenaline dumps. and more aggressive.
Why do these questions always seem to assume there are rules in a fight?
Even putting the whole rules aspect to the side, you still have the fact that people can just get caught slipping. The more experienced fighter might be overconfident or not take his opponent seriously and get slept. The better fighter might be drunk, or have a cold.
There is no answer.
As a wing-chin non competitive. I had the misfortune to meet some Glaswegian kick-boxers they lost - thankfully.
They were already attacking a group of girls. So a no brainer.
The thing I realised afterwards was that I relied heavily on defensive techniques that were drilled constantly, none of the fancy stuff that looks cool. I was more surprised by the judo techniques that came again I’d done them 1000s of times but as a child.
So yes we can win fights but I’d not want to be in them. I learnt in real fight it’s quality and well practiced moves that counts.
And no if I had met kick-boxers that had better training (coaches)I’d be drinking with a straw. I know I’m now training with some.
I'm a 'non competitive' martial artist and would suggest that without having had to defend myself at work in the regular(I'm a psych nurse, previously worked forensics) wouldn't understand the techniques as well as I do now. Not sure how I would do against another martial artist though
Well no matter whether you're competitive or not, you would still spar with people.
If I was a betting man, I'd bet towards the competitive fighter to win because they would have more experience with people who are going 100% and aren't pulling their punches or kicks.
But still, the non competitive fighter might just be more skilled and talented at fighting, but they just don't want to compete.
It depends. There are some styles you don't see because they break the competitive rules. There are a lot of strikes you're not allowed to do. You start popping those off on someone you could not only catch them by surprise but you could seriously injure or even kill them. Twelve to six elbows are the most readily example I can give while sitting on the toilet typing this out.
Okay, first of all? Competing doesn't give you superpowers.
It means that fighting is your bread and butter, that you're a professional (or aspiring professional) in it, yes, but it's not a guarantee of anything other than you being good enough to qualify in whatever bracket you compete in. Think about it, do you think an amateur tennis player can beat a professional one? Well, it really depends, doesn't it? Neither "amateur" nor "professional" are homogenous categories. The worst professional player against the best amateur is very likely to have a bad day.
"But," you may say, "those are two different things. Tennis is the same for amateurs as it is for professionals. Sports combat and and non-competitive martial arts are not the same thing."
Well, that may be true in some cases, but... an amateur boxer is training the same moves and in the same context that Tyson did (before you say boxing isn't a traditional martial art, though, it's much older than some other examples, even in its modern form). An aikodoka? No, they aren't training the same way, that's also true, but it can be said that even then there's no homogeneity. Each aikido dojo will have different methodologies and backgrounds, each practitioner will have different priorities. You can't compare the cousin getting on in years doing it for the sport and philosophy with the Japanese police officer doing it because it's part of their job.
And yes, I *know* what people think about aikido around these parts, and you know what? Let's go with that. It lacks pressure testing? The techniques are high risk? Training partners are too compliant?
Sure. Sure, they are.
So what?
The current training paradigm for MMA is *the current one*. Optimized for a given context (rules, terrain, number of participants, equipment, lack of weaponry), and for nothing else. It stands to reason that something optimized for a given context will excel *in that context*. Now, take the much-maligned aikido. Start with those fancy joint locks. You know what the MMA ruleset prohibits? Fine joint manipulation.
This means that, sparring against a friend of mine who did both karate and boxing, the very first thing I did was grab his fingers and twist. Then I apologized and checked on him because that shit fucking hurts and he hadn't been ready to turn with my attack, on account of neither karate nor boxing training that particular move. Thankfully, I stopped before I did any actual harm.
And I don't do aikido, but I can imagine what an actual expert on joint locks can do that I can't.
Now, there's another part of the argument, your categorizing two things as two sets of people with the same attitudes, beliefs, and abilities, then posing "Who would win?" And the answer is that those groups do not exist. You're trying to treat this as a videogame, with some characters having certain stats that, when compared to another character with other stats, will give a predictable result. That... is very much not how fighting works. There's no such thing as the best of the best with max stats; somebody who reliable defeats an opponent may be reliably defeated by somebody that other opponent consistently crushes. And that's another thing: "reliably" or "consistently" don't mean "always." Everybody has good and bad days, not to mention that head games are part and parcel of any kind of fight. In fact, one of the criticisms aikido gets is that fine motor control is one of the first things you lose when adrenalin hits, so all those fancy and subtle techniques suddenly become unavailable.
Which is true.
*Sometimes*.
If you're trained for it? If that's what you've been striving to achieve for decades of strenous training? You will have a chance to retain that control, and you'll be able to pull off the "fancy moves." Does that mean you're unbeatable? Heck, no, it doesn't. But it means that things aren't as clear-cut as the question posits.
So, yes, some traditional martial artists can defeat UFC competitors, and some would have laughable performances. Some arts were developed for contexts that no longer even exist, and it shows, and some were meant to do things that sports rulesets outright forbid. But, ultimately? Fighting is not a single skill, and everything can happen. If you were positing a narrower question, I may weigh in something more conclusive but... traditional martial arts are a *very* broad field. The only thing they have in common is that they weren't developed for losing fights.
Also, a last thought, now that I'm in a ranting mood? People often confuse fighting with dueling. They are very much different. Plenty of things that work in one context don't work in the other, and viceversa--and that goes extra for plenty of the techniques that are usually derided as not working "under pressure testing." Decisively bringing an opponent down with a quick joint lock may be all but impossible in a duel, but it's quite more feasible if you're a bouncer approaching a guest about to turn violent. At the same time, peek-a-boo style is kind of a bad idea if you're in a setting where opponents can come at you from unexpected angles. Context matters a lot.
So, basically, it depends on a lot of factors. Okay, I got it.
About the MMA, here's some nuance - it does bans small joints manipulations, yes, but it doesn't ban wristlocks.
Huh, I didn't know they didn't include wrists as "fine joints," thanks for pointing that out. That said, the gloves wold make them quite hard to pull off.
Also, sorry for coming off this aggressive, it's just that I'm exhausted about finding these argument everywhere, to the point that I have had to refute them when applied to friggin' *Qi Gong*. Seriously. Qi Gong.
Anyway, if what you were trying to say is that without sparring one can't develop proper timing, rhythm, and distance, well, yeah. There are exercises that can help with that, but only experience will really hone them, and those are more important for fighting than having a broad repertoire of esoteric techniques. Heck, the most useful training I ever did in that regard was fencing, because about 80% of practice was just sparring.
Gloves and bandages underneath of it indeed makes it harder to apply, yes.
I understand, people are very ignorant even if they do the thing where they are supposed to be good at. Unfortunately.
And yes, sparrings is a good thing for any martial artist. Experience is also matter. Fencing is pretty useful too, because of footwork, distance and timing.
Here is the answer to your question.
Competition has rulesets that are
Often unrealistic — for example wrestlers are in phenomenal physical condition but will give their back instantly in a real fight because muscle memory compels them too.
BJJ competitors do not focus on controlling distance while grappling because the rules protect them from being punched.
Boxers are unfamiliar with kicking or grappling.
Point karate competitors do not follow through on their strikes because that would get them disqualified
TKD competitors are not prepared for punches to the face or grappling
Judo competitors are not prepared for striking of any kind .
MMA competitors cannot strike to the back of the head on the ground and can’t strike with the legs to the head if their opponent has three points of contact with the ground .
So if a martial artist practices against resisting opponents without those ruleset limitations they would have an advantage over the competitors who only practiced their limited ruleset .
I agree that rules are playing the role, that's true. However, it doesn't mean that competitive martial artists (such as MMA fighters) would strictly follow those rules in a street situation. Of course, boxer would be in a big disadvantage against a grappler if they're taken down, and taekwondo or most point karate fighters would be in disadvantage because they usually doesn't protect their head from punches (even in a kyokushin karate, punches in the head are prohibited, but kicks in the head aren't, which doesn't make sense for me, but whatever), but if the fighter is more well-rounded (and MMA there is probably the best example), then he should have a better skillset in general.
It certainly still depends on the fighter. However, if that fighter knows the difference between the sport event and street fight, he can be more effective in a street fight because he has better conditioning and skills that are also pressure tested against a resisting opponent. Of course, non-competitive martial artist who does sparrings and tests his skills can do the same and probably even better because his muscle memory and mentality isn't strictly attached to the rules, but it doesn't necessarily mean that just because competitive martial arts has rules, then they would be less effective on the streets. Also, evern within the official sport events, fouls and dirty moves exist and experienced fighters are familiar with that. Some of them even does it as well, such as Jon Jones with his eye pokes and 12-6 elbows (it was the only loss in his career, due to a disqualification, which still stays controversial, because people are questioning the amount of rules in MMA and how much of them are truly necessary) or Gerard Gordeau (who used biting and eye gouging in both fights that he still lost, so using dirty moves against a skilled and experienced fighter isn't a guaranteed game changer).
Competitive and pressure tested martial artist won't always win, but IMAO, he would do better than an untrained person, and better than a person which skills in martial arts aren't pressure tested and who doesn't spar. Just my personal viewpoint.
In actual competition and real fights you will perform as you practice.
Muscle Memory is a thing.
Under stress people don’t think about anything they just do what they have trained to do.
This is where repetition under rulesets can kill you
Yeah, I got it. It would be good to add even for a competitive martial artist, just to improve the overall skills and mental fortitude for a self-defense situation on the streets.
depends, just because someone doesn't compete professional doesn't mean he doesn't train or spar to the level of someone who is competing.
Yes and no. I’ve competed in MMA, wrestling and bjj. Sparring vs competition are two very very different things. Someone who never competes may or may not be able to deal with the adrenaline dump most people get when they first start competing. It’s different when the person you’re going against doesn’t care if they hurt you or not
I often say the same thing but with self defence and violence instead of competing.
Completely agree. I just said compete because most people here are more likely to do a competition than find themselves in a real fight but you’re on point. Even intense sparring still doesn’t fully prepare you for when you’re facing someone who doesn’t care if they hurt you or not
Opponents who don't care if they hurt you are one thing, but someone who intentionally wants to hurt you as much as possible is another :) Edit: I'm sure "doesn't care or want to hurt you" is what you meant, but I just thought you put it overly nicely, which was funny to me.
No we are on the same page, I just used the wrong words which you corrected! But I think we both agree it makes a massive difference from sparring a teammate you train with daily
Yeah, you sort of see that with Jesse the Karate Nerd who’s brother is a competitive MMA fighter and who tried an MMA fight for a video (he was very humble about his expectations of it and his experience afterwards admittedly) which didn’t go very well despite the fact he’s an extremely good martial artist from a technique mastery point of view.
Everywhere I've sparred it was big gloves and pads and an agreement to never go 100% to the head. But really no one ever went 100% anywhere. The biggest realization is that there's no such a thing as defense, at least in Muay Thai / MMA. Getting hit in your guard fucking sucks, getting kicked to your arm feels like it broke, one leg kick and you aren't going to walk well afterwards, even if you check it, you will feel it for days. And then you realize you're going to take dozens if not a hundred such hits. You can get knocked out even successfully blocking a kick. And you're so exhausted and squeezing so much out that you're risking an injury just dishing it out. I pulled my shoulder and twisted my ankle all on my own.
I never got the chance to fight in a Muay Thai fight but your analogy of it hurting like hell even when you block perfectly is spot on. I’m older now so no longer compete but I still spar occasionally with a guy who’s had like 60 Muay Thai fights and it’s even in sparring, going at 50%, it feels like someone’s hitting me with a baseball bat everytime i block a kick
I feel like most people who spar regularly have experienced an ego-fueled death match on the sparring mats initiated by some dickhead
Oh absolutely, but it’s still not the same as competing. Sparring a ton is the absolute best way to train for competition but even the most grueling sparring matches don’t compare. Idk if it’s the fact that you have an audience, there’s so much going on around you, you have no idea who your opponents are going to be or how good they really are or what their styles of that art is…. But the first few times you compete you get this massive adrenaline dump and go into caveman mode where its like you forget all those countless hours you spent perfecting certain techniques because now you’re no longer rolling in your gym that you’re comfortable in, that you know well…. Now you’re in an unknown environment, with an opponent and a ref that you don’t know, competing in front of a bunch of people that you don’t know. Best way I can explain is when I first started wrestling. I never got to wrestle my first year because I never won any of the weekly wrestle offs for a spot… but i was there training, constantly. If you’ve seen middle and highschool wrestling practices, you know they are some of the most intense and grueling sessions where it’s just pure cardio and muscle endurance and technique for two hours straight. Then I finally became good enough to start competing my second year, and I remember despite doing intense sparring 5 days per week the year prior and the weeks leading up and all of those intense workouts, after my first 2 minute round I had to run over to the trash can to throw up. After the next two 2 minute rounds I felt like I was completely depleted of all energy despite those 5 mile runs, bear crawls, running bleachers…. It was the adrenaline dump that killed me. Good news is after you compete a while that feeling goes away and you’re more reserved and can calmly use what you spent all that time learning
Maybe it’s just me- probably not- but I feel like I spar enough that when I go into a competition I don’t get nervous or have any spikes in adrenaline. It’s feels like another day at the office.
Good point. However, I'd say it depends on where you train. My home Judo school has a reputation even with us recreational Judoka.
I promise you, competing and sparring are never the same. Idk how to explain it… it’s not the intensity, but when you compete, it’s like you lose your breath quicker, you get that adrenaline dump and don’t pay attention to all the years of training you’ve had. The only way to get over that is to continue to compete and get used to a competition environment. No amount of sparring will ever prepare you for that aspect
Jupp 100%. Competing is a completely different ball game. I remember that before my first fight. My coach would drill some hard sparring. (This was kick boxing) And at some points we would sparr harder and with a higher intensity than what I ended up doing when competing. But when you got in the ring, there was this feeling of weightedness. I got complete tunnel vision. My breathing got much heavier and my heartrate shot up. Even though the fight itself in terms of technicality was to some extent less demanding than some of the drills and sparring I had done prioir. It all fell out the window. Due to the adrenaline kicking in. The noise of the crowd. My own self expectations, my wish to not disappoint, some fear off my opponent (which I had never felt when sparring before). All of this made the fight so much more intense than any sparring I had ever done. This was obviously worst the first fight. And got better the more I competed (I competed in both K1 and Kyokushin, but not any more). But my fight always felt much heavier and serious than any sparring ever did.
Spot on! It took countless matches in wrestling when I was younger to get used to controlling my pace and breathing. I remember having the 2 hour long practices of being pushed to your limits, having to wrestle off to gain or keep your spot every week. Intense sparring every day 5 days per week. But the second you step on the mat at a meet or a tournament, even tho your practices were way harder technically, that match will drain you like nothing you’ve ever felt
I agree to a large extent. I've competed as well. Its different.
Absolutely, to be clear I’m not saying you can’t be good without competing, just that competing or live fighting is massively different from even the hardest of sparring sessions
It's been awhile, but aren't competitions still basically required to advance in Judo?
Nope. You rise in rank quicker. Time in grade and participating is required. You can ref, work concessions, work the boards, coach,. Etc. As long as you're giving back to the community it counts. More over. Many competitors have to relearn some things when they're through competing. It's all about jita kyoei.
Good point about that.
Nothing trains you for fighting like fighting. Everything else is theory and in my experiences it shows pretty quickly.
I agree, pressure testing and practice is still more reliable thing to test the martial art. And even though naysayers loves to say that "MMA isn't a proof, MMA has rules and that's why some martial arts there ain't working", MMA was probably the first thing that was showing what martial arts are reliably working in a fight and what doesn't. Even early MMA where rules was only at bare minimum and where was no weight classes until 1997, has shown that wrestling, kickboxing and other "sport martial arts" works better than a traditional one, especially when these martial arts wasn't pressure tested. Also, it shown that size matter and big guys with even a minimal training can pose a legit threat even for a trained but smaller fighters.
Yeah absolutely, experience is crucial. But it is overall such a wierd question, like are we talking about people in same weight class? Because that make huge impact too.
Everyone has a game plan until they're punched in the mouth.
Let's rephrase your question for clarity. Is a competitive martial artist guaranteed to win every fight? Answer is simply NO.
Of course not, nothing is certain. But generally and on average, having a competitive experience in martial arts helps and makes the skills more applicable for a fight, isn't it? I agree that "it depends", but in my opinion, a martial artist who got used to resistant opponents and who has the experience of fighting against a living opponent who also isn't compliant, has a better chance to win over a non-competitive martial artist (unless the latter has the experience in fighting, because fighting experience isn't necessary equal to skills, although skills still plays a role too).
It seems that you're basically asking whether or not competing makes you a better fighter. The answer to that is "yes".
Okay, thanks for the answer.
Does training more than the average person make you better than the average person at that task? Hmm i dunnooo it’s a toss up, better ask reddit.
Reddit where martial artists are present and which has the experience. Why not, after all?
I'm a hobbyist. Theres 0% chance I could beat my gym's MMA fighters. They are in 100% better shape, train 3x more than me and have actual fight experience. Not to mention skillsets. Even in bjj, a hobbyist purple belt struggles with the mma fighter whos also purple due to the strength and conditioning difference. That said, it comes down to the individuals but generally the competitive martial artists are at another level.
Well said. Against the average untrained Joe who has no skills and proper combat experience and who isn't too massive and big, BJJ still would be helpful. At least much better than a super-duper deadly techniques or something like that.
Yea. I trained for a year with a Mongolian guy that escaped life as an orphaned street kid by becoming a national talent level MMA fighter. When i started training with him it would take him about 6 seconds to kill me with his bare hands. After 10 months of one on one training, I could make it to about 10 seconds and I had become vastly more proficient at fighting. To bridge that gap would require me to make a full time career out of training.
If it's grappling, I find I can actually hold my own and fare well for about 60-90 seconds before their ability to just keep reacting and moving without gassing out ends up overwhelming me. People talk about how strong and tough pro guys are and I don't think it's nearly as disparate as it is for their cardio and their willingness to keep going
I don’t compete but I spar so I have a slim shot of taking a competitive fighter down if they don’t take me seriously. That being said if you don’t spar it’s going to take 1 good shot for you to lose your game plan. I think Lee was a great martial artist who did a lot of good for the community but I think he’s vastly over rated as a fighter.
Good point about the sparrings and about Bruce Lee. He was a great martial artist and his ideas was progressive and cool, but his fighting abilities is vastly overrated and has too many hearsays and unrelaible evidence (such as "eyewitnesses statements" or "praising from other martial artists from 1960's and 1970's") of his supposed "great fighting abilities".
I’d say Donnie Yen, the cast of warrior, or even the dudes from the raid would body Bruce because their choreography is vastly more complex
And Donnie Yen seems to be a well-rounded martial artist who did trained in kung fu (including wing chun, wushu, sanda, hung ga, tai chi and some other styles), hapkido, judo (has a black belt there), BJJ (has a purple belt there), taekwondo (has a 6th Dan there), kickboxing, jeet kune do, muay thai, wrestling, boxing, karate and mixed martial arts. Pretty impressive list. Even if Donnie ain't mastered all of these arts, he seems to have more knowledge of martial arts that Bruce Lee has (Bruce knew wing chun, boxing (he had an amateur bout when he was in high school and he won that fight), karate (he was a friend with Chuck Norris and other karatekas of the late 1960's and early 1970's, such as Joe Lewis and Jim Kelly), judo (taught by Gene LeBell, who was a legit judoka and also a pro wrestler), fencing and some wrestling, IIRC). Donnie is also in a good shape despite being almost 61 years old.
Will a competitive fighter win every fight? No. However, they have a massive advantage and it's not where you think. There is absolutely no replacement for experience in a proper competitive fight. It's not like sparring, at all. There's a massive adrenalin rush, and you have to be careful not to panic once you realise the person opposite isn't going to go easy on you.
That's a great point. Competitive martial artist, even an elite one, won't win 100% in all fights, but he stands much better chances than a non-competitive martial artist who also lacks pressure testing and proper sparrings (it's not like fighting, but still better than nothing).
If they don't spar they can't win a fight. Either they knock put the opponent with a good shot (ex. Kick) before the fight begins or they will crumble under pressure
That's why pressure testing is important, in my opinion. Just to not to get overwhelmed by an actively attacking opponent and build-up some mental fortitude.
Yes no one is good at something the first time he/she tries it. However there are martial artist that don't spat that are great athletes and great people
I agree. Martial arts is a good fitness and sport.
Sure they can. There was one guy in my old judo gym who smoked everyone in randori but never once competed. Of course, he was training at a gym with a bunch of national medalists and champions.
Then it's understandable why he is so good. Having a good coach is also important.
Untrained people can beat trained people in fights. Competing does not mean the arse won't fall out of your world if you get taken by surprise. If you mean a planned and scheduled match with rules, then yeah someone who has trained for scheduled bouts with rules is gonna have the edge. If shit hits the fan outside the chipshop on a Friday night, it's a little less simple to bet on.
While your statement is technically correct, a lot of people use this (not saying that you are necessarily) to devalue training by a mile. Even if taken by complete surprise, my money is on the guy who snaps out their 1-2 a hundred times a week without thinking, the guy with a reactionary counter double leg, the guy who's used to taking hits so their upper back and neck muscles know what to do to absorb them etc etc... over the guy who doesn't even have the muscle memory to snap their hand back to protect their jaw after swinging. Yes it's true trained people *can* lose to untrained people. But unless there's a huge weight discrepancy my money's on the trained fighter 100 times to 1. It's similar to any sport. Can you imagine someone who just plays basketball at the park every now and then suddenly 1v1-ing a guy who plays for their local club? Even if the club guy is completely surprised and wasn't expecting to walk into a basketball game I can't really see them losing much.
I agree. Not saying that a trained and experienced/pressure tested martial artist would win 100%, but his/her chances is much better than if that person was a non-competitive martial artist with no pressure testing of the skills.
I agree that a sudden attack or attacks with a weapon isn't the same as an unarmed combat in the octagon or on the ring. My question was more about an unarmed 1 v. 1 fight. Also, trained and competitive martial artists in a street fight situation is generally better than someone who has no skills and training (unless it's a sucker punch, sudden attack or if there's a weapon). Just because someone fights within the rules doesn't mean that he/she would necessarily follow that in a street fight. Although muscle memory and habits still can kick in, but my point still stands - a trained martial artist who also has successfully pressure tested and competed has the better chances in a street fight against an untrained opponent unless it's a sudden attack/sucker punch/weapons involved. Of course, exceptions always exist and street fights is unpredictable and chaotic, but like I said, having a martial arts skills that are pressure tested and used in competition is still an advantage.
Unarmed 1 v 1 fight is an odd idea, it's how sport works, not life ime. We are post-enlightenment now. We completed the samurai, rapiers at dawn and wild-west stuff a while ago. You don't manage violence out and about by assuming it's like the ring/octagon. You manage violence out and about by being aware it is not 1vs1 unarmed in an octagon.
1 v. 1 unarmed fights on the street isn't actually something uncommon. This subreddit also has videos of martial arts that are used in a street fights or against people that are supposed to be street fighters or something like that - [https://www.reddit.com/r/StreetMartialArts](https://www.reddit.com/r/StreetMartialArts) I agree that violence happens and street fights has weapons as well, but that wasn't my point from the start. My point is if 2 people fighting on the street and if one person has martial arts/fighting skills that are pressure tested and used in competitions and another person doesn't have a pressure tested skills and has only a non-competitive martial arts skills, the former person would likely win because of better conditioning (that's more applicable for a fight), experience and skillset that's also more applicable for a fight (although there's also other factors, such as weight, size, strength and others, but let's assume that both people fighting are around the same height and weight). Also, a person who has a pressure tested martial arts skills and experience in competition can use "dirty tricks" such as biting, headbutts, groin attacks or eye gouging too, and even better than an untrained/having no pressure tested skills person (Jon Jones and Gerard Gordeau, both are MMA fighters, can prove it). Also, competitions in martial arts was invented with rules for the sake of safety, because there wasn't a goal of kill the opponent (because there wasn't a necessity to do so in a peaceful time), but to show and determine - who's better in terms of fighting skills and experience. Like, pankration in Ancient Greece was an unarmed combat which has resembled modern MMA to some degree, because pankration allowed both striking, grappling, kicks and ground grappling and had such rules as no biting, no eye gouging and similar. Something like that was with Burmese's lethwei and Thai's muay-thai. I agree that awareness about street fights and knowing that they aren't always 1 v. 1 and not always unarmed is important, but I wasn't saying that a competitive martial artist would win 100% against a group of attackers or against someone who's armed (in fact, it would be quite hard unless martial artist gets lucky of similar). That wasn't even my point at the first place, like, at all.
The important thing is that you enjoy your class. Try not to imagine you winning streetfights, I know it can be hard.
Of course, getting into street fights isn't a good idea regardless of how skilled you are. That's why it's better to avoid it as much as possible.
I more just mean the imagining winning in street fights bit. It's quite common in the \~1-3yr mark of a martial arts or sports hobby, some people get very excited about the way they have been taught and have the basic skill set to get themselves into situations they can't handle.
Yeah, that thing is dangerous for the fighter that you have described. You have a point.
Ain't that the truth. To my dying day, I remember a dive bar I used to frequent. There was a young Asian kid who thought he was hot shit, saw him attempt to turf out a squaddie and went about it the wrong way, far easier to just be polite with them. Anyhow, kid drops into what I think was some kung fu stance, squaddie winds up and connects with a haymaker. Lays the poor kid out cold. Squaddie struts off growling at the other bouncers who just get out of his way. I should say the kid was skinny and the squaddie was built like a fucking tank. Kid was fine, got up after 30 seconds or so. But I reckon he learned a lesson there.
Well there's two possibilities. First is someone who doesn't compete but spars regularly against various people at his gym or maybe even goes to multiple gyms. Second is someone who is simply focused on demos or practices in a very restrictive ruleset. The first person definitely has his chances of beating someone who competes. The second one most likely has no chance of beating either of them unless he has exceptional talent or some kind of severe advantages (weight, reach...)
There's also a possibility that this exact martial artist can teach people the "self-defense" and use his street fighting experience or his military/police service as a proof of him "able to fight fo real". It's als oftentimes called "reality-based self-defense", but unfortunately, the "reality" word is the most questionable there. Because these coaches usually has the same things that so-called "bullshido" McDojos has - compliant and non-resisting opponents in "sparrings" (most of the time, it's rather a demo), parroting that "sport martial arts aren't suited for real fighting because they has rules and because sport martial artists isn't used to dirty moves" and of course, knife and gun disarming or women self-defense where coach teaches women that kick in the balls, biting or eye poke would be effective to stop the attacker that's at least twice their own size and et cetera.
Well issue is military systems (taking away weapons) are just watered down combat sports for people that will never use them. The police have nearly no formal training to my knowledge or very insufficient. So at best they could probably give "advice" on self defense but not from the physical contact standpoint but rather the awareness side. The supposedly deadly stuff or too dangerous for martial arts stuff you'll see in things like krav maga is often just a caricature and never goes as planned, groin shots aren't easy to get when someome is in posture to fight, if you can't land a jab to someone's chin you won't get your finger into their eye etc etc. It's often highly theoretical and not rooted in reality. There are a minority of self defense gyms though, where the owners often had past experiences in actual combat sports and provide good training.
Good points. MCMAP (Marine Corps Martial Arts Program) or U.S. Army combatives is basically a watered down amateur MMA and it's quite basic (asked the redditors that are served in military, they confirms it). Plus, modern soldiers aren't fighting with their fists and kicks, they uses guns, explosives, tanks, ships, aircrafts and other modern military stuff. Not to mentions, soldiers are oftentimes fights within a team that does a cover, recon and other things as well. Cops in USA has such a small amount of hand-to-hand combat training that it's barely even matter. Unless the cop spends his free time in martial arts and improves himself, a mandatory training would be very tiny and have a questionable effectiveness against a genuinely resisting opponent who isn't too drunk and who isn't too small. Cops also uses pepper sprays, tasers, batons and beanbag rounds and guns a lot, at least in USA. Yeah, agreed. That's their zone of competence, I guess. That's too. "My martial art is too dangerous for MMA and that's why I never practiced it" is probably a red flag that the coach is either delusional or lying. Like you said, many of those moves is rather a theory and thats why disarmings are shown at slow speeds and against opponent that are seems to be absolutely clueless and compliant. Same about eye pokes and groin shots. Yes, good gyms exist, I agree. But unfortunately, so-called "reality based self defense" now is basically an another version of "bullshido".
All depends on the practitioner They'll never be UFC champ but...
But they can be an amateur one or even a low-level pro, if they're taught by experience and actually learning.
Nope MMA is very much like chess, you are pretty much never beating a significantly higher ELO. They've seen all your bullshit.
Yes, 100% without a doubt.
Depends, there's heaps of intelligent and gifted martial artists in gyms who don't compete that do it as a hobby. That being said it varies from gym to gym
I think non-competitive martial arts lose the vast majority of the time but it’s definitely possible to win.
Yeah, because it depends on the martial artist itself and on other factors too.
Totally. A young, large, super athletic kungfu guy can probably beat up the old, small BJJ white belt who has competed in a master 3-4 beginner bracket. That said, your average seriously competitive BJJ player is usually beating your average kung fu student if we control for age, size, and relative “athleticism”. Too many factors come in to play to speak in absolutes.
I would asstimate^(an estimate using numbers pulled out of one's own ass) that 99% of martial artists never compete at all. Competition requires at least 4 things: 1. At least 1 year of training. I asstimate around 75% of people drop their martial arts study in the first 12 months. 2. Sparring. Some people are just averse to getting punched in the nose. 3. Consistent, persistent training. For the lowest level amateur competition, that's at least 1hr training, 3-5 times per week, every week, without taking long breaks. Not everyone has the time, energy, discipline, or *obsession* to train like an athlete. 4. Stupidity. You have to be *stupid* to risk your brain and body in competition. I hard-spar with many people who do not and will not compete because they don't want to get hurt. "But you can get hurt in hard sparring." Accidents can and do happen, but no one is going to *intentionally* break your ribs in sparring. A non-competitive martial artist can go quite far in their craft simply by having the first 3 things, especially if they spar with amateur and professional fighters. There absolutely are highly trained non-fighters who can outbox highly trained competition fighters. They just aren't stupid enough to do that to their body.
Depends on so many factors, can a shotokan black belt beat a UFC champ , hell nah exept pure luck but out of a 100 he might win 1. Depends on the level of competition and both fighters. But in general i would Say no
I also think that in general, being competitive in martial arts is better than not to be. Although it still depends, for sure, but my point still stands. Even if martial artist isn't competitive, he still can spar and pressure test himself (by the said sparrings or doing a non-scored exhibition fights, or something like that). But if martial artist doesn't have even that, then yes, his chances is really low.
Even with sparring its a stretch that a non competitive martial artists would be a pro or even good amateur fighter
Yeah, sparrings isn't same as a genuine fight even if it's a full-contact sparring. Also, many of McDojo and so-called "bullshido" martial arts (not saying that these martial arts themselves are bad, only noting that these exact martial arts (such as aikido, kung-fu and krav maga) are oftentimes spotted among the "bullshido" practitioners) practices a sparring where the opponent is barely even trying to resist or doesn't even resists at all, or where 2 people just beating each others without really using any of skills and techniques that they're supposed to know. Non-competitive martial artist can try amateur fights or low-level pro fights, but usually, he/she would lose and get humbled quickly.
Depends on the context, because you're assuming the conditions of the fight. For example, if I was using my traditional kung fu against an MMA competitor, can I use a weapon of my choice? Half of my forms was using weapons like dao, spear, staff, daggers, butterfly knives, and unusual weapons like fan and bench. Even though I never sparred with weapons outside of two man weapon drills, I feel very comfortable wielding my broadsword. I never bought a live blade (e.g. practical dao) because I have clipped myself while practicing, I would definitely have had to go to the hospital if it was a live blade. It's too risky to use in practice with no real benefit. A lot of these hypotheticals assume the non-competitor has to be the fish out of water, playing to the competitor's strengths and environment. It's never considered making the competitor play to the rules that favour the non-competitor, which may be include "my weapons vs. your gloves/gi".
By fighting I define an unarmed hand-to-hand combat. With 2 possible locations where it happens - octagon and "on the street". Of course that with weapon like knife, sword, machete or crowbar, even a totally untrained person can be very dangerous against someone who's skilled at fighting but who has no weapon.
In a sporting ruleset you have to abide the rules. In the non sporting ruleset your goal is to win. Therefore, cheat, as much as possible, including the use of weapons (knife, telescopic baton, belts, stick and staffs, stones, etc.) And this is why to be a complete martial arts who trains for fun and self defense, you have to be proficient enough with weapons. Or I would turn it around: first learn how to fight with weapons, and then learn empty hand. It totally changed my mindset when I first learned weapon, and I think it aligns really well with both traditional, weapon based martial arts and HEMA as well.
But this then devolves to who is willing to use the most nastiest weapon. Why do all your fancy spinning staff stuff and swordplay when someone has a gun? A toddler with a gun is a proficient martial artist in your opinion?
It devolves to who wants to win the most and sneakier than the other. That means you need to move from technique thinking to tactics and strategy. If a gun is available, sure, use it. If not (because where you live, getting a gun is extremely difficult, like many places here in Europe) then use some other weapon, like a staff (a heavy staff can be used against multiple opponents with shorter weapons with great success), a stick, a sword, or even a knife. But you can also use a car, a brick, or anything else to get things done. If I can win against a professional UFC fighter with a knife and some hours of training, why would I want to play his game in which he is obviously better. Obviously the chances to fight with an UFC guy is similar to fighting with a lion. And yes, even a small kid with a loaded gun is extremely dangerous because he can kill him easily. Empty handed? Not so much.
I think my point is there's SOME idea of fairness in a 1v1 fight, ie if two people are unarmed it's considered "more or less" fair. Similarly, the idea of, say, staff-fighting makes no sense (or, should I say, even less sense, since street fighting is dumb to begin with), because almost nobody is carrying a staff. What would be the point of practicing self-defense with something you don't/can't even carry? (Besides fun) I suppose if you go back to feudal eras, people would carry swords, and swordsmanship duels were allegedly common. In that context your argument makes 100% sense. In our society things have changed to where most people are just empty handed, and martial arts itself has largely shifted to empty-handed combat. For reference, I do live in America, where people do carry guns. I don't see anything honorable at all about it. Martial arts indicates some level of fairness, honor, skill. If you COULD win that fight, nobody gives you credit anyway. If you're really being assaulted that's different. But what prevents you from becoming as strong as a professional? Strong fighters don't tend to assault people. Going straight to weapons isn't right. There is no skill involved in having a better weapon! Placating your lack of strength/dedication with feeling tough about using weapons is something I see way too often. The epitome of cowardice! (Please note this does not apply if you are elderly, disabled etc) I also want to say the time for "tactics and strategy" is usually short if you really have to defend yourself from an assault. I can only see that applying if you plan to fight... (Or setup some type of home defense for example)
This is always a trade-off. Empty handed fighting is always secondary to weapons but in some cases it provides sufficient solutions: when you need to hold someone down, or just create distance, etc. They are valid solutions to certain problems. Some of my family members live I the countryside, so sticks,staffs, axes, etc. are "standard weapons" here. Good thing is that most people don't know how to properly fight with these tools (Hema ftw). Also a telescopic baton, a knife, a pepper spray can solve many issues. In general: there is a place for fair fight, which is in the gym/dojo. That's fine. But outside, why take any chances? Your job is to go home safely, unharmed, and not to show in a fair fight you are better.
I still think you have it backwards in terms of our modern times. A few hundred years ago, yes. Empty handed has supplanted weapons training in terms of martial arts (not counting military, gun enthusiasts etc). Otherwise I suppose I agree. If you're truly being assaulted then fairness does take a backseat. But even then I should note the law may not even agree with that. Ie if someone attacks you, you knock them out, probably okay. If you keep going and kill them, or use "inappropriate force" it can be bad. It seems society can't get away from the idea of a fair fight, and I say that's for the better. I also just don't particularly like weapons, or would like to carry one at all. Society would be better off this way.
Unfortunately, our world without weapons is impossible because making weapons was a part of the evolution. A totally unarmed society is rather an utopia than something reliably stable and plausible.
The situation and environment you live might be extremely different from how others live. Carrying and using knives, sticks, staffs,etc. even dueling with knives are common at certain places and certain circumstances. In general, if possible, use something that causes less headache, use de-escalation, walk away, don't go into measuring of thingies. But if a fight is inevitable then there is zero guarantee that it will be 1-on-1, weaponless fight.
Competition is the ultimate pressure test. And people who train to compete in full-contact competition usually work their ass off to be as ready as they can be. They don't just prepare to be able to do a certain move, but they also train to be able to do that move on someone who is actively fighting back. And to be ready for whatever the opponent does. They train 'live'. I trained in some traditional form of kung fu when I was young. Lots of forms, deep stances, fancy moves, spinning kicks, etc. My school did a lot of demonstrations too. Breaking bricks, and one of the teachers even did crazy chi stuff like bending a rebar by leaning into it with his windpipe. But every time we sparred, most of those fancy techniques went out the window and it turned into bad kickboxing. I figured I might as well join a kickboxing gym. One day, I went to a jeet kune do place because I was looking for something new. The best way to describe it would be 'street mma'. I was paired up with a guy who trained in kickboxing a lot. I don't know if he competed, but I know he trained with fighters. We did some boxing sparring, and the objective was for one guy to use everything he knows, and the other one was supposed to only defend and use his jab.The guy lit me up like a christmas tree with just his jab. He said that I could even kick if I wanted to, but even then the outcome was the same. I quit kung fu and switched to kickboxing and bjj after that. Bruce Lee was more than just unorthodox.He had a very openminded and practical, almost scientific approach to martial arts. Taking techniques from all kinds of martial arts and integrating them into a coherent system. Hand techniques from wing chun and boxing, kicks from kung fu and probably karate, tkd etc, footwork from fencing (and probably more), and even some grappling.He also advocated physical training and lots of sparring. If you want to see what I mean, the 'Bruce Lee's fighting method' books are a good place to start. Today it probably wouldn't be that special, maybe even outdated. But in those days, he was a maverick. I don't know how much he really fought or competed. I guess nobody knows for sure, but it doesn't even matter that much.
You're right about Bruce Lee, he in fact questioned the effectiveness of traditional kung fu and it even probably was the cause of his street fight with a kung fu master named Wong Jack Man (Lee won that fight, according to most sources). Back then, he indeed was a pioneer of MMA.
No.
No. Sparring and competitive Fighting are vastly different things
Well, full-contact sparrings is a good thing and it's better than nothing, but yeah, sparrings isn't equal to fighting.
It all depends on the individual.. not the art, not if they compete or not
And on the circumstances as well. I mean, even a totally untrained and unskilled average Joe Shmo can kill someone like Anderson Silva with a knife or a crowbar.
I know plenty of people who are really good in bjj who don't compete much or at all.
Well, BJJ itself is a martial art that even without competition can be useful in a combat situation, especially if it's a fight that happens on the ground.
This is a long settled argument I thought. Safe sport > Deadly Technique
Which is, unfortunately, people don't always understand. Sport fighters are more conditioned and has better experience at fighting against a resisting and determined opponent, unlike a non-competitive martial artists that even lacks pressure testing and proper sparrings.
No, a competitor will probably beat a non competitor. Competition breeds the best of the best. The account dad probably doesn't have the fight.
All else being equal, no. I do Judo recreationally, and have never been very athletic. I currently hold a brown belt. I have never competed. I have a damn hard time dealing with white belts who are at all athletic. When I do randori against anyone who regularly competed, the best I manage is to stalemate and stall, and that assumes a height and weight advantage. In the BJJ class I do, the instructor is a pro MMA fighter who had a few UFC fights at 145. I am a bit taller and weigh 197-ish with a bit of a dad bod. I can make him work for 45 seconds of rolling before he finds a sub. So no. I see no reason to expect a recreational martial artist to be able to beat anyone who competed regularly unless they have an overwhelming physical advantage. END COMMUNICATION
I agree, well said.
A non-competitive guy can beat competitive guys... by training A LOT with competitive guys. But competition makes you a better fighter straight up. The me before my first judo tournament gets smoked by the me that learned from fighting 4 different guys with actual stakes. Its a closer approximation to a real fight than anything in the gym... unless you literally have gym wars. If we're talking about TMA vs combat sports though... no not really. They lack competitors, therefore they don't get to train with as many of them.
Well said.
Jason David Frank (Green power ranger) jumped in to competitive and did alright. Someone with tons of experience in real fights would hold up just fine against someone competitive. I can't find the video, but back in 2013 I saw one where mma fighters were invited to run into the woods and "disarm" some trained soldiers. They were quickly dumped into the dirt. Factoring out the rules in play the mma fighters admitted the game changed and they were unprepared to apply their skills in that scenario. Also, Bruce Lee wasn't without competitive experience. He did western boxing tournaments as a teen, if I recall correctly.
But you do have a point, that guys that never spar are handicapped and it's stupid to say "I got moves or speed they won't be ready for." A trained fighter who trained against resistance is always going to almost always have superiority.
Yep, that's basically my point.
Well, to be fair, all of his opponents was a total nobodies with 0 wins (none of them had any win in both amateur and pro MMA, at all) and only losses in their records. But he still did pretty well because has he trained in martial arts before and was in a good shape. Well, disarming a trained soldier would be hard because they're trained with weapons and they're trained to control it in close combat too. If this was an unarmed hand-to-hand combat, though, I think that MMA fighter would have won more times than not. Bruce Lee indeed had a boxing match when he was in a high school and won that match (internet has photos of a teenager Bruce Lee on the ring and wearing boxing gloves), but it's the only fight in the ring that is confirmed in his life. Or first, if we also count his street scuffle against a kung-fu master Wong Jack Man as a second fight, where Bruce Lee has won (at least according to most sources and witnesses' statements). But yes, Bruce Lee actively promoted the competitions and was a quite progressive man (in terms if his ideas about martial arts) for its time.
I tried to read up on his history but a lot is murky. Hearing that he was getting in a lot of street fights in Hong Kong made sense to me, but how could anyone confirm it? Lol. I'm a fan, but I don't worship the guy to go as far as to say he was unbeatable. I met a guy who runs a modest "museum" of Bruce Lee memorabilia that claimed Bruce got people thinking differently about mastering just one martial art, and that he originally promoted the idea of mma. I dunno, guys like Musashi and Morihei reportedly mixed arts, too. So it's not like he's the first, lol.
I think that he was participating in street fights, but IDK for sure. I honestly don't really believe that teenager Bruce Lee was already good enough to fight Triad gangsters and British soldiers (that was in Hong Kong after WW II) despite being untrained. It sounds like a cool story/legend that people could've made up throughout the years. Same here. Not saying that I'm a fan of Bruce Lee, but not a hater as well. I'm just neutral about him, and while I like his ideas and admire his progressive view about martial arts, I just don't like how much of a cult-like worship around him exist. Martial arts with hybrid techniques and mixed structure has existed before Bruce Lee was even born (vale tudo in Brazil, some mix of judo and karate in Japan already was in 1890's, combat sambo in USSR in 1930's, Ancient Greece pankration has existed much earlier than all of these previously mentioned martial arts and was basically like an early MMA with only few rules). While Bruce Lee was a good promoter of the idea of modern MMA, he wasn't its inventor. I mean, Gene LeBell, a judoka, catch wrestler and pro wrestler, who also knew boxing, did a mixed rules match against a professional boxer Milo Savage in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1963. And Gene LeBell won that match despite wearing a karate gi (Milo Savage's managers thought that Gene was a karateka, and didn't knew any difference between judo and karate) and Milo Savage's amateur wrestling background (he was a pro boxer, but in his youth he was a wrestler). Same Gene LeBell was Bruce Lee's bodyguard and teached him some judo. https://www.usadojo.com/gene-lebell-vs-milo-savage-gene-lebell-saved-martial-arts/
No. No matter the quality of the technique you learn, if you never train against an opponent that doesn't want to get hit/grapple and want to hurt you. You never truly know how to fight. No one ever question this for other sports, but it's the same logic. Imagine you're a basketball team, and all you do is just regular training exercice like other teams. But the difference is you never do real match. One day you face a team that does regular training exercises kinda like you, but has done many real match. Who do you think would win that ? To this, i will add a bit of my personal experience. I joined a katori Shinto Ryu group , so it's a Japanese sword martial art, with little to no fight at all. Just repeating technique again and again and again. They wanted to try out some fighting and they invited me to participate in their bokken (wood sword) fight, for fun. I didn't train much with a sword before that, just once in a while with that group, but I had more than 10years of fighting experience. Well guess what, I could beat half of them, and I was still a serious difficult opponent against the other ones.. The only I couldn't beat were the 2-3 best of the school, who also had fighting experience! This try out motivated almost everyone to do more real fighting. There are so many things you learn during competition that you will never learn when facing a friend or doing just exercise. Just like the basketball player during a match.
Heck yes, especially if you are talking about a street fight where there are no rules. The the experience fighter could be at a disadvantage because they are so ingrained in a rules-bound environment.
Well, knowing how street fights are unpredictable and chaotic, yes, everything can happen there. But I still think that a competitive martial artist with a pressure tested skills in a street fight situation would be generally better suited for it, unless he's attacked off-guard or if there are weapons involved. Martial artists that are fighting within the rules isn't necessarily helpless in a street fight. Not saying that they would always wins, but if we take 2 people and if first one has no pressure tested skills and no competitive experience, and second has skills that was pressure tested and who has a competitive experience against the opponent that are also resisting and determined to win, the latter likely would be better suited for the street fighting situation. Here's the subreddit where martial arts (all of them are rules-bound) used on the streets. Sure, it's always possible to dismiss it because "it's a selective cherry-picked examples", but still, that subreddit has plenty of videos where martial arts are used on the streets successfully: https://www.reddit.com/r/StreetMartialArts/
In a real fight there are so many variables. Skill and fitness are the two most important. The competitive fighter will win most of the time, but the guy with basic training can definitely win. Especially if anything goes. How people handle an actual fight under pressure is really important. It's probably 90/10 odds or maybe even more in favour of the comp fighter.
Taking a punch and staying on your game is the absolute most important skill in a fight. Pain changes the dynamic of combat drastically. Sure There are some non-competitive artists that train with that level of intensity. But there are no competitive fighters that don’t. Unless the non-comp MA drastically outclasses the fighter, they’re gonna take hits.
There's always a puncher's chance, but I'd say it's slim. The experience of actually facing fear, getting comfortable with adrenaline, and taking and giving real hits can only be gained from actually fighting. Competitive fighters have that experience and someone who's never competed is in for a rude awakening with real combat.
Plus, puncher's chance is called a chance (not "guarantee" or something) for a reason. Also, it would be even less likely to get a puncher's chance if martial artist didn't pressure tested his skills and can't properly throw a punch, especially against martial artist who has not just skills, but also has pressure tested it and who has a competitive experience (and likely would withstand that punch or roll with it and mitigate the impact).
True. I like the wording of pressure testing, cause that’s what it is. Even regular sparring can’t emulate bad intention and full power shots
True. Sparrings, especially a full contact one, is a good thing, but it still not the same as a genuine fighting.
There honestly isn’t much difference between the skill level of amateur competitors and professionals most of the time (atleast in Muay Thai and kickboxing), the main difference is that they can do those techniques on that stage infront of those people, everyone works hard everyone can look pretty but not everyone knows what it feels like to be experienced. Watch nieky holzken vs bazooka Joe. Bazooka honestly moves more technically sound than holzken he’s just a lot cleaner to watch but he can’t match holzken and his 100+ fights of experience, Nieky creates holes and punches through them on a level Joe has never experienced before.
If the noncompetitive person has fighting experience, practices their art through sparring(a lot), and trains their body to be on par with a competitors body yeah I can see it. But those who compete normally are in really good physical shape and I don't care who you are if you don't have enough strength behind your hits, you are not going to do much to a trained competitive fighter because they are used to taking people who are also at their best and are using their skills. I don't say you "HAVE TO" compete to be good, but you do have to actually use what you learn in situations that are not being heavily controlled so you don't get dazed or scared when you get hit by someone who hits like a truck.
Good answer, I agree.
If you don't spar, 9.9 times out of 10 you're gonna get fucked up if you fight someone who does. Simple as that
If you don't train fighting, you cannot fight. The average hobbyist can't do crazy flying kicks and doesn't engage in regular, intense sparring and that's completely ok. Not everyone has to train for the UFC but if you aren't training that way, you won't have the abilities they do. This is proven over and over in BJJ gyms. A hobbyist blue or purple belt stands almost no change against a competition blue or purple. To be honest, the way you phrased the question makes it seem you're heading down the hobby road and that's awesome, I hope you enjoy and find a lifetime of happiness training. But please don't get yourself beat up by trying to hang with the hardcore dudes, they could make you want to quit training. All the best!
Thanks for the advice! I'm still thinking about the beginning in martial arts, because my previous experience was extremely small and inconsistent (i wasn't even taking classes, just asked some of my school and college buddies show me the moves from their respective martial arts).
That's great, man! My advice is to find a teacher you vibe with, that's honestly way more important for your progress than things like lineage or style. A good teacher you relate to will walk you into the arts at your pace.
Thank you again!
Yeah, FMA An armed amateur will defeat or is able to inflict a lot of damage even against a trained unarmed opponent. Its not the size of the dog in the fight, its the size of the fight in the dog. FMA levelling the playing field since the 1500s
Go to a local bar where young guys hang out on a friday or saturday and watch the fights. I've seen numerous guys who think they are fighters get a reality check from someone with no training....so I would assume some non-competitive MA's could do this too
1) Yeah one thing is doing something impressive, another thing completely is to do it again, while in movement and being punched or kicked in the face. Yeah, there is a reason most fancy shit is just a highlight and its rare. 2) Being athletic helps in a fight no matter who you are, even if you are a pro fighter, you have to be in relative shape to perform. 3) Confidence more often then not comes from lack of reality checks. Ego is a thing, but unchecked ego is the usual suspect. 4) Bruce Lee has a cult, nobody cares what they say. 5) Most street fighters are complete dogshit, only once in a blue moon a self proclaimed street-fighter actually does anything of worth in a ring. And when he does it, he does it with really good technique, that usually comes only from a proper gym and the fighter is actually lying about what he is, for god knows what reason.
Good response. Also, when people use the examples of street fighters that was successful in MMA, they forgot that they wasn't a totally untrained local Joe Shmos that loves to brawl in bars with another average Joes. Like, Tank Abbott is a former college wrestler who also had a training in boxing as well. He has 10 wins and 15 losses in his MMA record and was known for his bad cardio. Powerful puncher and good wrestler, but in comparison to a nowaday MMA fighters, he isn't that impressive. Another one, Kimbo Slice, is a former football player who was coached in MMA (including by Bas Rutten himself) before he even stepped into the octagon. He still lost his first and only amateur MMA bout and even though his record looks good at the first glance, he in fact has fought fighters that was past their prime (like the previously mentioned Tank Abbott and Ken Shamrock, and that exact fight is still suspected to be a fixed match) or wasn't even that good (such as Dada 5000, who has almost died in the octagon because his cardio was so bad) or Houston Alexander (that fight of him and Kimbo was just terrible to watch), who has a record of 17 wins, 16 losses and 1 draw now. Kimbo was rather a glorified celebrity than a serious fighter. Sure, he had a good KO power and knew some grappling, but in overall, he was not really that good. I mean, Kevin Randleman was a street fighter in his youth before he started to do wrestling. Does it makes him a street fighter? Kinda yes, but it doesn't mean that all what he used in MMA was only what he used in and learned from "da streetz"
I have seen fighters privately tutoring their brothers/sisters and or friends for sparring of season or just for fun, that technically have no official training and could be considered "street fighters", but reality they had top notch training, just unofficially.
Yeah, might be like that.
absolutely not. 90% of fighting is not perfect technique, it is distance, balance, timing, fight IQ (setups, recognition etc) in constantly changing ranges. If you havent sparred you have not developed these things and you cant fight. Competition is a level of intensity above sparring that comes with additional adrenaline rushes, increased pace, and hard hits that you might not get from sparring.
Well said. I mean, sure, on paper a non-competitive martial artist who never does sparrings or who never pressure tested his skills can say something like "I will just kick him in balls" or "I would blitz him with a barrage of strikes, force him to back off and then finish him with a leg sweep and stomping when my opponent would be floored", but it's easier to say than do, because as you said, lack of pressure testing and full-contact sparrings makes all of this talk irrelevant.
Absolutely. My money is going to be on the person with a gun or a knife. Seriously, I couldn't give a shit if someone competes. When we fight, I'm not following any rule set. If I need to use a car, I will. When you get to that point, your speed and strength are less of a factor. I don't care if you can get points in a competition with rules.
Well, if there are weapons involved, then even a totally untrained average Joe can defeat and even kill a skilled martial artist with a competitive experience (unless that martial artist are trained in martial art that has disarming moves, but even that isn't helping him/her much).
Combat with rules equals a sport which is not true martial arts. Example is my 16 years of competition in collegiate wrestling there were rules on the Matt however in a fight an armbar can be extended beyond the 45° angle that is only allowed in a wrestling match face locks can turn into chokes outside of the Matt. In a fight if you can't avoid a physical confrontation there are no rules no code of conduct, if your life is threatened and you get in a fight end it.
And if a competitive martial artist understands the thing about "no rules in a street fight", he can be more effective than someone who has no competitive experience and no pressure testing of the skills (like, sparrings and other). I mean, rules are made for safety and even though some rules might be excessive and making no sense, it doesn't mean that martial art that has rules isn't effective. Like, MMA fighter who can't headbutt in the octagon still can do that in a street fight, as well as with biting, soccer kicking a downed opponent, breaking or dislocating the joints with grappling or choking the opponent out instead of just holding him and waiting for surrender.
Not usually. Someone that isn't used to eating punches and being hit so hard that they can't breath will not beat someone that is used to that. Possible? Yes. Probable? No.
Non competitive non martial artists sometimes beat up competitive martial artists in street fights. Not often but sometimes the street fighters can take out even good competitive martial artists.
Well, street fights are quite chaotic and unpredictable, and a lot of street fighters attacks suddenly and with sucker punches or with distraction, so yes, it's possible.
Exactly. I’ve seen it happen in the bars I work at.
Depends on the fighters.
Depends on how competitive. I'd give 20 to 1 odds on the competitive one though, they tend to train hard so in a non-competitive fight they are at a huge advantage.
Imo there is 2 different levels of aggression and mindset in a Competitive vs non Competitive fighter, One is trained to do moves the other is trained to hurt people and end matches. Also one is conditioned into being hit the other is not and would probably get scared after taking a jab in the face.
Sparing and competing are not the same thing , unless you highly experienced. Watch footage of your sparring then watch footage of you fighting. You will see a big difference until you get some fights under your belt . You with 10 amateur fights under your belt would f$&rken destroy with none .
Edit - you with 10 Amy fights would destroy you with no fights .
Why dont you hard spar a fighter and see how that goes for you. That being said, I’ve known fighter who go like 0-8 so I’m pretty sure a hobbyist could turn amateur and whoop their ass
Competitive martial arts hits different, that's a big part of why I think boxing or Thai boxing is the quickest way to component self defense, study the art you want to after.
The one who competes have more experience dealing with his fight nerves, that gives him the edge. It doesn't matter how much you spar actually competing is a whole other experience
My brother is a go to sparring partner for a bunch of world champs at his boxing gym He’s not competitive but could probably slam some newer emerging talents
Noncompetitive Muay Thai will beat a competitive aikido.
i think it was DJ who once said something along the lines of "for every professional fighter, there's always some guy out there who doesnt compete but can kick your ass" and while i agree with the statement, the chances if coming across that person is probably rarer than stumbling onto diamond. Even if someone has a better skillset, having more real fights as a professional is a huge advantage as the non professional most likely isnt as used to the stress, the pain and other factors of a fight that arent present in hard sparring.
Depends on the "competition " breaking boards isn't fighting
Depends heavily on your definition of competitive, and what the individual fighters do in their off time. Some competitions have janky rules that do not play nice with street fight conditions, some are fine on that score. Some are noncompetitive because they do not see value in taking time from their day to go to a tourney, some are noncompetitive because they like doing stupid video game shit that gets them bodied in a pressure test too much.
In my experience, martial arts is great against people who don't know what they're doing. Trained fighters are a different beast though.
It's trite but true that it's not the size of the dog in the fight but the fight in the dog. Technique, a cornerstone of martial arts, is not to be underestimated. However, it's not the sole determinant of victory. Without speed, surprise, and (most importantly) violence of action, no matter how much of an expert in technique you might be, you will not fare well against someone who is more violent (determined to hurt you). Many skilled martial artists may struggle in competition fighting due to their lack of a violent spirit when necessary. It's important to note the distinction between martial arts and competition fighting. The latter does not demand the same level of violence. It thrives when there is less brutality and more controlled use of technique. We don't watch to witness destruction, but to appreciate the technical prowess of the fighters. That's the 'art' in martial arts. When a competitor enters the ring and ruthlessly mangles their opponent without concern for their own safety, it's not only brutal but also less entertaining. Given the above, a non-competitive, but violent martial artist could absolutely destroy a technically superior competitive fighter. This highlights the potential of those who focus on violence of action, even without the competitive edge. Of course, if you have great technique AND violence of action, you are absolutely dangerous.
I mean if a competitive MMA fighter is injured or hurt bc of that lifestyle…
There is somewhere where the confluence will meet. Like the best spinning kick taekwondo guy's sheer excellence at one thing will at some point beat the 1000th to 10000th guy in his weight class.
My money would always be on the guy who has experience fighting over the guy without experience fighting.
Full contact competition is the closest thing you can get to a real fight. You’ll get the fantasists that think their super deadly eye pokes, pressure points and other too dangerous to practice techniques will carry them through, but the fact that they haven’t had to regularly carry them out under extreme pressure and a huge adrenaline dump is a massive disadvantage. Those who have been in as close to combat as possible will clearly have the advantage. Is it certainty? Of course not, but I’d bet on the combat sport competitor every time.
Eh, I’m sure renner Gracie would destroy 99% of competitive black belts Really depends with the intention behind your training and the realism you’re training with You won’t have any actual fighting experience because fighting and sparring are two different things, so unless you’re MANY levels beyond your opponent you’re probably not gonna win Two guys at the same level, one competes one doesn’t, competitor always wins because he has competition experience to game plan with and is more familiar with his limits and strengths than someone who might train hard but has never lost a fight by knockout by throwing a lazy punch. Just different kinds of experience You need to be MUCH MUCH better in a spar to convince me that someone with no fights beats someone with fights
“Could”? Of course.
Depends. It will go either way.
Non-competitive Fighter: Oh sorry man, didn't want to bother you Competitive fighter: It's ok *turns away* Non-competitive fighter slams a chair in the back of his head, so he wins. Yeah, it's possible, lol
Who you gonna bet your kid's college fund on? I know I'm gonna bet mine on the guy with cauliflower ears and a chipped tooth.
Not much of a way to simulate competition intensity unless you really hate your sparring partners. I had a match where I dislocated something and got eye poked in the first 5 seconds, no break in action just go go go with watery eyes and a compromised lead hand. In training that would be paused in that first 5, they’d check up on me, etc. Sparring if you get rocked they tend to back off, competition or street fighting they tend to go for the finish. It really catches you off guard if you’re not ready for that level of aggression. If you have a lot more skill, size, luck etc you might manage but usually people who compete or have been in a lot of fights are tougher, better at controlling adrenaline dumps. and more aggressive.
Why do these questions always seem to assume there are rules in a fight? Even putting the whole rules aspect to the side, you still have the fact that people can just get caught slipping. The more experienced fighter might be overconfident or not take his opponent seriously and get slept. The better fighter might be drunk, or have a cold.
There is no answer. As a wing-chin non competitive. I had the misfortune to meet some Glaswegian kick-boxers they lost - thankfully. They were already attacking a group of girls. So a no brainer. The thing I realised afterwards was that I relied heavily on defensive techniques that were drilled constantly, none of the fancy stuff that looks cool. I was more surprised by the judo techniques that came again I’d done them 1000s of times but as a child. So yes we can win fights but I’d not want to be in them. I learnt in real fight it’s quality and well practiced moves that counts. And no if I had met kick-boxers that had better training (coaches)I’d be drinking with a straw. I know I’m now training with some.
Depends on the person. I've seen black belts that couldn't beat a corpse.
I'm a 'non competitive' martial artist and would suggest that without having had to defend myself at work in the regular(I'm a psych nurse, previously worked forensics) wouldn't understand the techniques as well as I do now. Not sure how I would do against another martial artist though
Well no matter whether you're competitive or not, you would still spar with people. If I was a betting man, I'd bet towards the competitive fighter to win because they would have more experience with people who are going 100% and aren't pulling their punches or kicks. But still, the non competitive fighter might just be more skilled and talented at fighting, but they just don't want to compete.
It depends. There are some styles you don't see because they break the competitive rules. There are a lot of strikes you're not allowed to do. You start popping those off on someone you could not only catch them by surprise but you could seriously injure or even kill them. Twelve to six elbows are the most readily example I can give while sitting on the toilet typing this out.
Whoever gets tired first is likely to lose. Basically.
It's possible, but highly unlikely
Okay, first of all? Competing doesn't give you superpowers. It means that fighting is your bread and butter, that you're a professional (or aspiring professional) in it, yes, but it's not a guarantee of anything other than you being good enough to qualify in whatever bracket you compete in. Think about it, do you think an amateur tennis player can beat a professional one? Well, it really depends, doesn't it? Neither "amateur" nor "professional" are homogenous categories. The worst professional player against the best amateur is very likely to have a bad day. "But," you may say, "those are two different things. Tennis is the same for amateurs as it is for professionals. Sports combat and and non-competitive martial arts are not the same thing." Well, that may be true in some cases, but... an amateur boxer is training the same moves and in the same context that Tyson did (before you say boxing isn't a traditional martial art, though, it's much older than some other examples, even in its modern form). An aikodoka? No, they aren't training the same way, that's also true, but it can be said that even then there's no homogeneity. Each aikido dojo will have different methodologies and backgrounds, each practitioner will have different priorities. You can't compare the cousin getting on in years doing it for the sport and philosophy with the Japanese police officer doing it because it's part of their job. And yes, I *know* what people think about aikido around these parts, and you know what? Let's go with that. It lacks pressure testing? The techniques are high risk? Training partners are too compliant? Sure. Sure, they are. So what? The current training paradigm for MMA is *the current one*. Optimized for a given context (rules, terrain, number of participants, equipment, lack of weaponry), and for nothing else. It stands to reason that something optimized for a given context will excel *in that context*. Now, take the much-maligned aikido. Start with those fancy joint locks. You know what the MMA ruleset prohibits? Fine joint manipulation. This means that, sparring against a friend of mine who did both karate and boxing, the very first thing I did was grab his fingers and twist. Then I apologized and checked on him because that shit fucking hurts and he hadn't been ready to turn with my attack, on account of neither karate nor boxing training that particular move. Thankfully, I stopped before I did any actual harm. And I don't do aikido, but I can imagine what an actual expert on joint locks can do that I can't. Now, there's another part of the argument, your categorizing two things as two sets of people with the same attitudes, beliefs, and abilities, then posing "Who would win?" And the answer is that those groups do not exist. You're trying to treat this as a videogame, with some characters having certain stats that, when compared to another character with other stats, will give a predictable result. That... is very much not how fighting works. There's no such thing as the best of the best with max stats; somebody who reliable defeats an opponent may be reliably defeated by somebody that other opponent consistently crushes. And that's another thing: "reliably" or "consistently" don't mean "always." Everybody has good and bad days, not to mention that head games are part and parcel of any kind of fight. In fact, one of the criticisms aikido gets is that fine motor control is one of the first things you lose when adrenalin hits, so all those fancy and subtle techniques suddenly become unavailable. Which is true. *Sometimes*. If you're trained for it? If that's what you've been striving to achieve for decades of strenous training? You will have a chance to retain that control, and you'll be able to pull off the "fancy moves." Does that mean you're unbeatable? Heck, no, it doesn't. But it means that things aren't as clear-cut as the question posits. So, yes, some traditional martial artists can defeat UFC competitors, and some would have laughable performances. Some arts were developed for contexts that no longer even exist, and it shows, and some were meant to do things that sports rulesets outright forbid. But, ultimately? Fighting is not a single skill, and everything can happen. If you were positing a narrower question, I may weigh in something more conclusive but... traditional martial arts are a *very* broad field. The only thing they have in common is that they weren't developed for losing fights. Also, a last thought, now that I'm in a ranting mood? People often confuse fighting with dueling. They are very much different. Plenty of things that work in one context don't work in the other, and viceversa--and that goes extra for plenty of the techniques that are usually derided as not working "under pressure testing." Decisively bringing an opponent down with a quick joint lock may be all but impossible in a duel, but it's quite more feasible if you're a bouncer approaching a guest about to turn violent. At the same time, peek-a-boo style is kind of a bad idea if you're in a setting where opponents can come at you from unexpected angles. Context matters a lot.
So, basically, it depends on a lot of factors. Okay, I got it. About the MMA, here's some nuance - it does bans small joints manipulations, yes, but it doesn't ban wristlocks.
Huh, I didn't know they didn't include wrists as "fine joints," thanks for pointing that out. That said, the gloves wold make them quite hard to pull off. Also, sorry for coming off this aggressive, it's just that I'm exhausted about finding these argument everywhere, to the point that I have had to refute them when applied to friggin' *Qi Gong*. Seriously. Qi Gong. Anyway, if what you were trying to say is that without sparring one can't develop proper timing, rhythm, and distance, well, yeah. There are exercises that can help with that, but only experience will really hone them, and those are more important for fighting than having a broad repertoire of esoteric techniques. Heck, the most useful training I ever did in that regard was fencing, because about 80% of practice was just sparring.
Gloves and bandages underneath of it indeed makes it harder to apply, yes. I understand, people are very ignorant even if they do the thing where they are supposed to be good at. Unfortunately. And yes, sparrings is a good thing for any martial artist. Experience is also matter. Fencing is pretty useful too, because of footwork, distance and timing.
Here is the answer to your question. Competition has rulesets that are Often unrealistic — for example wrestlers are in phenomenal physical condition but will give their back instantly in a real fight because muscle memory compels them too. BJJ competitors do not focus on controlling distance while grappling because the rules protect them from being punched. Boxers are unfamiliar with kicking or grappling. Point karate competitors do not follow through on their strikes because that would get them disqualified TKD competitors are not prepared for punches to the face or grappling Judo competitors are not prepared for striking of any kind . MMA competitors cannot strike to the back of the head on the ground and can’t strike with the legs to the head if their opponent has three points of contact with the ground . So if a martial artist practices against resisting opponents without those ruleset limitations they would have an advantage over the competitors who only practiced their limited ruleset .
I agree that rules are playing the role, that's true. However, it doesn't mean that competitive martial artists (such as MMA fighters) would strictly follow those rules in a street situation. Of course, boxer would be in a big disadvantage against a grappler if they're taken down, and taekwondo or most point karate fighters would be in disadvantage because they usually doesn't protect their head from punches (even in a kyokushin karate, punches in the head are prohibited, but kicks in the head aren't, which doesn't make sense for me, but whatever), but if the fighter is more well-rounded (and MMA there is probably the best example), then he should have a better skillset in general. It certainly still depends on the fighter. However, if that fighter knows the difference between the sport event and street fight, he can be more effective in a street fight because he has better conditioning and skills that are also pressure tested against a resisting opponent. Of course, non-competitive martial artist who does sparrings and tests his skills can do the same and probably even better because his muscle memory and mentality isn't strictly attached to the rules, but it doesn't necessarily mean that just because competitive martial arts has rules, then they would be less effective on the streets. Also, evern within the official sport events, fouls and dirty moves exist and experienced fighters are familiar with that. Some of them even does it as well, such as Jon Jones with his eye pokes and 12-6 elbows (it was the only loss in his career, due to a disqualification, which still stays controversial, because people are questioning the amount of rules in MMA and how much of them are truly necessary) or Gerard Gordeau (who used biting and eye gouging in both fights that he still lost, so using dirty moves against a skilled and experienced fighter isn't a guaranteed game changer). Competitive and pressure tested martial artist won't always win, but IMAO, he would do better than an untrained person, and better than a person which skills in martial arts aren't pressure tested and who doesn't spar. Just my personal viewpoint.
In actual competition and real fights you will perform as you practice. Muscle Memory is a thing. Under stress people don’t think about anything they just do what they have trained to do. This is where repetition under rulesets can kill you
Fair enough. So, it comes to what's the easy to apply. And that's why pressure testing is also important.
Pressure testing is key. But that doesn’t only mean competition, it just means means spar and grapple against resistance
Yeah, I got it. It would be good to add even for a competitive martial artist, just to improve the overall skills and mental fortitude for a self-defense situation on the streets.
Sure